Tate Speech: Radicalization Discourses and Multi-Level Marketing Recruitment Strategies in the Manosphere

• In Event: 40820 - Section on Sociology of Sex and Gender Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 14: Gender, Tech, and Online Spaces

Abstract

My study aims to uncover the discursive elements behind the gendered recruitment strategies that influencers in the manosphere use to pipeline men and boys into their multi-level marketing (MLM) companies. In the manosphere, male supremacy is presented as subversive, disruptive, and taboo while also harkening back to patriarchal family and political structures, and this line of thinking attracts men to adopt misogynist and explicitly anti-feminist viewpoints due to a perceived loss of status. MLMs take advantage of emotional and economic instability, and in the digital age are becoming more visible and accessible to a wider variety of people. While some research has explored how this recruitment looks for women, little research has been done on how these sellers attract men as their clients. My work examines the Twitter (X) account of the popular manosphere influencer Andrew Tate as I attempt to trace his discourse along a three-pronged gendered recruitment strategic framework, a framework originally developed around women selling essential oils online and funneling their followers into radical alt-right politics. I ask the questions: What are the similarities and differences in recruitment strategies for men versus women? And how does Tate’s rhetoric and methods recruit followers, get them “hooked” on his content, and subsequently downline them into his own MLMs and the manosphere more broadly? This problem addresses the rise in misogynistic behaviors among men both online and off and will hopefully begin to fill a gap in literature on masculine-coded MLMs. In addition, it will attempt to provide direction for how to stymie this uptick in radicalization towards the manosphere and misogyny-laden MLMs.

Author

• Carey Joseph Priebe, Virginia Commonwealth University