Shiny Chandravel, Assistant Opinions Editor Andrew Tate is facing 42 criminal charges including rape, human trafficking and possession and distribution of child pornography.  Andrew Tate also has 10.8 million followers on X, formerly known as Twitter. When I was 16, Andrew Tate, social media personality and former professional kickboxer, became the third most globally Googled person of 2023. When scrolling through TikToks of baking recipes and dance tutorials, I occasionally stumbled on his videos. One video featured him stating, “I’m a realist and when you’re a realist, you’re sexist. There’s no way you can be rooted in reality and not be sexist.”    In another video, he stated, “The masculine perspective is you have to understand that life is war. It’s a war for the female you want. … It’s a war for the car you want. It’s a war for the money you want. It’s a war for status. It’s a war, masculine life is war.” In similar viral videos, Tate perpetuated the ideology that women belong to men, women bare responsibility for being raped and encouraged sexual slavery.  At first when witnessing these jarring videos, I honestly did not think too much of it. I had learned from a young age that the internet disproportionately spotlights extremist views. It was not until weeks later that I realized how pervasive it had become. In the midst of Instagram doom-scrolling, I came across a long list of mutuals that had been liking, reposting and following Tate’s content. That was when I felt the deep pit in my stomach form.  How could my classmates — boys I had grown up beside, people I had worked on projects and shared classes with — resonate with Tate’s violent and pejorative messaging? Tate is just one of many provocateurs, from Andrew Wilson to Myron Gaines, within the popularly coined “manosphere.”  “Louis Theroux: Inside the Manosphere“, a documentary exploring this subculture, exposed these “influencers” as grifters, many of whom exploit their derogatory talking points for profit. For example, in a Miami court filing, legal representatives for Tate and his brother, Tristan Tate, explained that the two deliberately play into the facade that they are wealthier than they are. They rent supercars and yachts to generate online attention because at the end of the day, their “alpha-male” image is just a business model to uphold.  But why are so many of my seemingly normal, well-adjusted male classmates