You Can't Ignore What You Don't Like // Variant Perception #33

I’ve always been fueled by curiosity. As a kid, I’d lay awake until the early morning reading books. As a teenager, I’d spend hours browsing the web, reading everything from meditation techniques and Buddhist philosophy to physics and astrology. No topic was off-limits.

Curiosity drives my insatiable desire to learn about everything and everyone, no matter how weird or contradictory. It’s the main driver of this newsletter as well. I borrowed the term ‘Variant Perception’ from the world of investing. It refers to a view or perspective that deviates from the consensus and that in order to outperform the market, one must have a view that's different from the majority's, and, crucially, that view must also be correct.

In the context of this newsletter, the name implies my practice at providing a unique, potentially contrarian, perspective on controversial topics, using my curiosity to develop a separate perspective from the mainstream views.

What am I asking ‘why’ about this week?

Well, an acquaintance of mine, David Sutcliffe, got invited to interview the infamous Andrew Tate. David’s a former actor and now psychologist who brought a unique and different approach to the over two-hour-long interview.

Why is that interesting to me? Well, Tate has become a lightning rod in pop culture. Some people (mostly young men) have become fully devoted sycophants. They pay $50 a month for the “Hustler’s University” membership (which Tate reports having 170,000 members), which teaches ways to make money online. Many credit Tate for changing their lives for the better.

Others (mostly women) vehemently oppose him. They read his quotes or hear his interviews and instantly feel repulsed. They characterize Tate as a misogynist, a cult leader, a liar, or everything that’s wrong with men. He’s the epitome of toxic masculinity.

Many in mainstream culture would prefer to ignore Tate. Speaking about him gives him more power.

However, a character like Tate is all our problem. Because we’re all responsible for the culture we create. Intense moments of disharmony point to an imbalance in our culture. The polarity is the symptom. But what’s the root cause?

So, why do people hate Andrew Tate?

This one is easy to answer. He’s arrogant. He’s selfish. He’s violent. He has a litany of quotes that will make your skin crawl. He speaks about male/female dynamics that we (the collective we) have felt like we’ve worked hard to leave in the past. He uses aggressive language to promote a hierarchical point of view on gender roles, placing men on top of women.

Tate’s absolute, fixed perspective creates a bombastic character that leaves no room for other, more gentle, more caring, more compassionate perspectives, which have been the hallmark of progressive points of view in modern culture; Tate would call those points of view weak anyway.

There’s plenty not to like about the Andrew Tate character. I’m sure you’ll find plenty of examples yourself if you watch the interview. Except, as I shared already, he’s amassed millions of fans, especially young men.

Why do people love him?

Tate evokes confidence and strength in a world that has, perhaps, gone too far to dissuade masculine tendencies and gifts. He’s the pinnacle of achievement over everything.

Tate provides a simple hierarchy for determining self-worth— competence and achievement. In the interview, Tate shares that you must “have a very strict framework [for] how you measure how successful you are… I do it through competence and achievement.”

Many of his fans credit his content with changing their life. A quote from a great article in the Intelligencer sums it up well.

Christian… had a horrible time in sixth grade, he says, zero friends, just coming home after school and playing Roblox, and he credits Tate with changing his life. “Mind-set is everything,” Christian tells me, echoing something he learned from Tate… When seventh grade came around, Christian joined the wrestling team, and he is considering taking up soccer and kickboxing. He feels popular. Now instead of playing video games, Christian says, “I like to train. I like to work out. I like to have fun with my friends.”

Tate’s influence led to a young man adopting more positive mental and physical habits like playing sports, feeling motivated, and seeking friends. It’s easy to see why young men could be drawn to Tate’s explicit recipe for success and kick-in-the-butt motivation techniques.

Young men face troubling trends around mental health, income, suicide, and loneliness. But Tate comes along and gives them a motivating, inspiring, and simple message to create their own destiny and take charge of their life. A straightforward message that if they train, work hard, and make money everything else will get sorted.

It’s a ripe and fertile environment for a charismatic strongman like Andrew Tate to come in and point at the (often) ignored struggles of men (because caring about men could imply not caring enough about women) and proclaim to have all the answers. Tate’s confidence, his money, and his power are intoxicating for men who lack that. It’s the answer to their problems.

What does the phenomenon of Andrew Tate teach us?

The article in the Intelligencer sums up the cultural context well.

“I feel like, in general, in mass and mainstream media — this is definitely a very controversial thing to say — masculinity is being painted in a very bad light, then this guy comes along who’s very masculine and he’s inspiring the youth,” Dylan tells me. He wants to be more productive in his life so he can feel less lost, he says, “and then I turn on TikTok and there’s Andrew Tate saying, ‘You have to work as hard as you can, and if you just work on your goals, you’ll achieve them.’” Other influencers aren’t giving point-by-point constructive advice, Dylan told me. “Tate will say, ‘Why are you watching me? Go do something productive,’ and I’ll go do whatever I’ve been procrastinating, like my homework,” he says.

Tate’s incredible popularity reveals aspects of how our culture views masculinity that need attention. We live in a culture that’s hesitant to celebrate the unique gifts of masculinity. The drive, the focus, the raw horsepower of what makes men, men. We fear that if we celebrate men, who have enjoyed being at the top of the power structure, we will create less opportunity for others or, even worse, return to the patriarchal culture from whence we came.

Except by shunning all parts of the masculine, we encourage the worst parts, the most anger-motivated parts, to rise to the top. Tate speaks directly to men who feel stuck. Men who feel like they’re not encouraged or allowed “to be men.” The evolution of our culture to become more inclusive, compassionate, and inviting has simultaneously shamed or excluded young men from that same reality. Hypocrisy creates the raw ingredients for characters like Tate to rise because they accurately identify and point to what’s being ignored.

People might have an issue with what I’m saying because they believe that identifying the struggles of men takes away from the struggles of others. That perspective creates the Andrew Tates of the world. There’s nothing regressive about encouraging men to achieve and thrive. We all win together or we all lose together. There’s no tit-for-tat success.

Zero-sum empathy creates a lose-lose game. When we ignore the struggles of one group and create favoritism of another, we encourage the charismatic strongman who comes on the scene to solve all the problems; Donald Trump being a perfect example.

So, as a culture we must do better to include all perspectives in our pursuit of progress. Solve this problem and characters like Tate disappear.

-Jared