"Filming for the third season of Smatouha Minni (You Heard It From Me), a feminist series in Arabic, the actor is in a padded muscle suit, wearing a slicked-back black wig and beard."

"'If your wife asks you to change the diapers, you should change her,' the Palestinian-Jordanian barks, mimicking an aggrieved self-help podcaster. An hour later, she is slouched in a hoodie, shisha pipe in one hand and a gaming console in the other, shouting: 'Mama, I’m hungry. Can you make me a sandwich?' The sketches are parodies of a misogynist narrative gaining traction in the region. 'Patriarchal attitudes have always existed,' says Amanda Abou Abdallah, the Lebanese founder, co-writer and director of Smatouha Minni. 'But what we’re seeing now is a re-intensification – a backlash against women’s growing participation, independence and public voice, especially online.' Chief among the ideologies circulating is the so-called 'red pill' theory, popularised by figures such as Andrew Tate, whose influence in the region intensified after his conversion to Islam in late 2022. The doctrine frames men as victims of a feminist, 'gynocentric; social order and urges them to reclaim power through dominance...."

 From "'If your wife asks you to change diapers, change your wife': the Arabic hit show that parodies the patriarchy/The female-created YouTube sketch series Smatouha Minni – You Heard It From Me – uses satire to confront misogynistic attitudes" (The Guardian).

"I want you to imagine a guy today, if R. Crumb never existed, but he emerged as R. Crumb today and put that work out. He would 100% be labeled in the Andrew Tate camp, right?"

 

Duncan Trussell had sent Joe Rogan an R. Crumb drawing, and it sets Joe off:

"How does a man like this become a 'trillionaire' guru to teenage boys? You may think he is ludicrous..."

"... a globular kickboxing star and former Big Brother contestant. But his reach is staggering: over 11 billion views on TikTok. And what is he pouring into young minds? Streams of grim misogyny: tales of hitting women, choking them, smashing their faces in if they cheat, while maintaining that any cheating on his part is just 'exercise.' It is as if someone has taken every type of woman-hater you can think of — a footballer, an incel, an Arab sheikh, the Tinder Swindler — and rolled them into one menacing, manscaped action doll, given them loads of guns, money and cars and made them say worse things than Donald Trump. He is a God to many boys. Why?"

Writes Camilla Long in "The ascent of a lowlife like Andrew Tate proves that misogyny is baked into our everyday lives" (London Times). 

"Rumours had swirled online that police had been tipped off to [Andrew] Tate's presence in the country after he posted a video taking aim at the environmental activist Greta Thunberg."

"However, this is not believed to be the case. In the footage he posted, he was handed a pizza box from a local restaurant, which some users suggested had inadvertently revealed his location to officers. The row with Ms Thunberg began earlier this week when Mr Tate tagged the 19-year-old activist in a post boasting about the 'enormous emissions' produced by his fleet of cars. Following the arrest, Ms Thunberg tweeted 'this is what happens when you don't recycle your pizza boxes,' referring to the online rumour...."

From "Andrew Tate detained in Romania over rape and human trafficking case" (BBC).

A strange story, strange enough to overcome my previous resistance to participating in the notoriety of this person. He's "from social media platforms like YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok — for hate speech (in the form of misogyny). He was banned from Twitter too, but he's one of Elon Musk's restorations.