During an appearance as co-host of The Project on Sunday night, Abbie Chatfield opened up about the “really hard time” she’s been having on social media lately, as the influence of Andrew Tate becomes harder to ignore.
Former kickboxer and Big Brother contestant Andrew Tate has previously been described as “the scariest man on the internet.”
As his popularity continues to grow on TikTok there has been strong retaliation, with many accusing Tate of spreading violent and misogynistic messages.
The 35-year-old presents himself as a self-help guru on TiKTok, where videos of him speaking have racked up over 11.6 billion views, including content intended to help male fans “pull” women.
However, his most popular videos reveal frighteningly misogynistic and aggressive messages, including beliefs that women “belong in the home,” “can’t drive” and are “man’s property.”
As the panel discussed the popularity and power of Andrew Tate on The Project, the conversation quickly turned to Abbie’s own experience on TikTok, with the podcast host and reality star revealing that she has been directly influenced by his growing popularity.
“I do feel like I really want to ignore him. I want to suffocate him of any oxygen in media, because the more I engage with his content – even to research, for a radio segment – if I look at his TikToks, or he’s tagged in a TikTok and I look at it for too long, that feeds the algorithm and it feeds out more to my followers and to the followers who are already engaging in that content,” she explained on the show.
“It is getting a bit too big to ignore now. But I do still fear that if I speak about it to my followers or my listeners, it doesn’t really achieve anything. I’m sure those who are my listeners already feel this way, they agree that yes, he’s disgusting, he’s awful.”
Abbie also revealed that her own experience online has “absolutely” been influenced by Tate.
“I’m getting DMs from what appear to be early teen boys saying, ‘I hope Andrew Tate destroys you,’ or things along that line.”
“I also get comments calling me ‘Abbie Tate,’ and comments on TikTok especially. That’s where it’s really, really rife.”
WATCH: Abbie Chatfield hits out at body shamers “picking apart” her figure. Story continues below.
Abbie further explained how the rise of Andrew Tate’s popularity on platforms such as Tik Tok is evidence of a double standard on content moderation.
“I upload a TikTok in a white singlet, with a bra on, and it gets deleted in a minute, wouldn’t even go up. But there’s endless videos of him saying that women are property, and extremely vile, misogynistic things.”
“How can that slip through the cracks but me in a singlet can’t?”
The hypocrisy of gender standards in content moderation made headlines last week after Tommy Lee’s nude image remained on Instagram for six hours.
While many were quick to laugh and share the full frontal shot – which was simply captioned “Oooops” – many have pointed out the clear double standards in Instagram’s censorship policies.
This article first appeared on our sister site, New Idea.
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