Andrew Tate has taken the internet by storm with his recent shenanigans. Over the last six months, his name has become one of the most searched terms on Google, surpassing MrBeast. Tate's current popularity can be attributed to his appearing on numerous podcasts, specifically on Adin Ross's show on Twitch.
Streamers like HasanAbi have commented on how well "platformed" Tate's appearances are. The reason for his recent social media presence is mostly a marketing strategy for an online course he offers called Hustlers University.
Currently going through its second iteration, the program promises to, according to the official website:
"Turn around your financial life. Become a financially free person."
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The bold text is embossed on the website's front page as short videos of exotic cars, yachts full of women, and Andrew Tate smoking a cigar with his uber-rich friends in the background.
Andrew Tate's Hustlers University is a pyramid scheme
First, it is important to note why Tate is so infamous on the internet. Always mired in controversy, Tate is the self-styled "King of Toxic Masculinity" who is allegedly polygamous - has multiple wives - and lives in Romania. According to the streamer, the country has lax se*ual assault laws, which is one reason he chose to live there. Tate has routinely compared women to property.
He is also a notorious "red-piller." Much like other financial gurus on the internet, Tate constantly propagates that the system is working against a person. According to him, one must struggle against 'the system' and unlearn all its messages to succeed.
The following is the trailer to the program where Andrew Tate claims to be Morpheus, waking up numerous Neos to break through the matrix:
Tate's hypermasculine personality is significant to the legitimacy of the course and is what attracts subscribers who are predominantly, if not wholly, men.
The structure of the course
The entire Hustlers University is a network of separate Discord servers. Each has its own unique specialization with dedicated professors allegedly hand-picked by Tate. Specific specializations include:
- Crypto
- Stocks
- Freelancing
- Copywriting
- E-commerce
- Amazon FBA
- Affiliate Program
For $50 a month, subscribers can choose their specialization. The professors are also supposed to be multi-millionaires themselves.
While the course might share rudimentary information about the fields mentioned above, primarily for beginners, such information can easily be found on the internet for free.
YouTuber Coffeezilla recently reviewed the course, which has since gone viral because the YouTuber had a highly comedic response to Tate's red-pill promise in the trailer. Coffeezilla noted that it is ironic that the course teaches students about Amazon FBA and e-commerce:
"You've been told you're gonna escape the Matrix, you're gonna take the red pill. What you end up doing is sort of learning how to run an Amazon side-hustle for Jeff Bezos."
Is it a pyramid scheme?
A prime accusation against Hustlers University is that it is a pyramid scheme. The affiliate program, which by some accounts is the most widely used source of income for its students, is essentially a multi-level marketing scheme, which is jargon for a pyramid scheme.
Andrew Tate is followed by a vocal cult of highly-online personalities who give him positive reviews and troll critics. Most, if not all, positive reviews on YouTube and other platforms always accompany an affiliate link. This means the reviewer earns a commission each time someone joins the program through their link.
Below is an "honest" review from last month with an affiliate link in the video description praising the course. Numerous such videos can be found on YouTube, all with a common denominator: an affiliate link in the video description.
Andrew Tate's presence on Twitch has drawn a lot of hostility from a broad section of the streaming community. Chief among them is political commentator HasanAbi who has made numerous videos on the Tate and the type of business he runs.
In a video titled 'Andrew Tate's Hustlers University Is ABSOLUTELY INSANE,' he comments on why the grift is so profitable:
"If the main source of revenue for you is how to get rich quick schemes and the job or the presentation that you're offering to people, is how to get rich quick by selling how to get rich quick schemes. Then you're just f***ing people over."
This is the definition of a pyramid scheme where affiliates of a program make money by selling the program to more people. Andrew Tate possibly earns a whopping $5 million per month for 20K subscribers to his channel. As Hasan reiterates, Hustlers University may not be a total scam, but it is a lie nonetheless.
"He's [Tate] making money by selling you the idea that you can get rich but the way he's getting rich is by selling you the idea of teaching you how to get rich."
With his highly controversial and critically panned take, Andrew Tate creates shock value and attention, attracting socially inhibited people to his course. He promises to teach people how to be a millionaire like him. However, he conveniently leaves out the part where he made his first millions in the adult entertainment industry. He is currently under investigation on charges of human trafficking for his work.
Hustlers University makes money for Andrew Tate and others who push it online. This closed group has generated enough noise for some people to get flushed into the system. They then pitch the course to other vulnerable people, continuing a vicious cycle of exploitation.
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