Is Andrew Tate playing a character?

Andrew Tate’s viral stardom has left many wondering if he truly believes the things he says or if it’s all an act.

For better or worse, Andrew Tate has become a force in the Twitch world. The former pro-kickboxer and reality TV star has made his mark on the internet largely through controversial opinions on women and their place in society.

He’s so consistently in the headlines that many people are asking if he’s playing a character and cashing in on a lack of scruples for the wondrous reward of internet stardom, or if he’s really the same man when the lights turn off and the camera stops recording.

There’s a lot to be considered when determining if this is all an act, but if you follow the bread crumbs through the forest, there’s a pretty definitive answer waiting for you at the end.

Andrew Tate bursts into mainstream Twitch culture thanks to TikTok and Adin Ross

Tate’s brand of controversial opinions and misogynistic takes are not new to the internet, but they’ve seemed to find new life when uttered by the Hustler’s University founder. The former pro-fighter is pretty much always being held over the coals on TikTok, but he most recently held the viral spotlight thanks to a July 16 podcast with Adin Ross, and in the time following, it has practically been impossible to avoid clips of him defending his opinions.

Former Overwatch pro and current content juggernaut xQc and political commentator HasanAbi are the two standout names to challenge him so far, and both of those streams only further launched him into the world of virality.

What makes Tate stand out from the sea of other creators who have tried and failed to build an audience by trading on outrage is a sea of charisma and an absolute lack of filter. All it takes is a cursory glance at comments on that initial Adin Ross podcast stream to understand why people tune in to watch him go back and forth over the net each week.

“When you look past Andrew’s character and exaggerations, he spits very real wisdom. The man could motivate a chicken to fly,” one comment reads. Another commenter claims that A.T. is the key to fixing a generational problem among men: “He is the answer to what young weak men need right now – and for the last many decades.”

Of course, Tate already knows he’s magnetic. It’s how he landed on the reality UK version of the reality TV show Big Brother back in 2016. He’s been around the entertainment industry enough to know how to build a personality and sell drama to anyone willing to buy it. There’s a reason he streams with his shirt off and a cigar in his mouth – it sets the expectation of what comes next before he even opens his mouth.

It’s all a part of the devil-may-care attitude that uses the building blocks of every “jock” stereotype that modern media has ever produced to create the perfect image of the ‘alpha male’. It’s Dan Bilzerian meets Otto Weninger and the internet is eating it up.

This kind of cult following is unhealthy at best, but it gets significantly more concerning when asking whether or not Tate believes what he’s saying day in and day out. If he does, then he’s peddling deranged, harmful narratives that are finding a bigger foothold with each new streamer that engages with his ego-filled rhetoric. If he doesn’t then he’s building a fanbase off of the vilest instincts of the public all in the name of money that he almost assuredly doesn’t need.

Andrew and his brother Tristan accumulated quite the fortune through running a ‘camgirl’ site where viewers, often time lonely men seeking any form of companionship they can possibly find, spend money to keep the attention of the women who stream there.

The problem is the entire thing is fake. As the other Tate brother told Sunday Mirror in 2016, “it’s all a big scam.” The women who are on camera are not the ones responding to these suitors in private chats. It’s an operation that sees multiple team members holding conversations and working cash out of clients that believe they’re engaging in a real connection.

Andrew has spent most of his time as a celebrity proving that he’s exactly who he says he is. When you factor in the 11 sexual assault charges that allegedly inspired him to leave the U.K. and move to Romania in 2017, there’s just no question about what’s going on behind the scenes: His entire broadcasting career has amounted to the video equivalent of an r/AITA thread to which the answer is yes.