Upsetting Day: Andrew Tate’s Morning Routine🌭

Here is a man who was caught in the act of cranking his hog at the moment Pompeii was incinerated by a volcano:

If our civilization should fall, the equivalent discovery would be this mesmerizing 23-second video depicting manosphere influencer Andrew Tate’s morning routine.

WARNING: By watching that video, you are generating revenue that Tate will likely use for evil. I know that even by mocking it, I am giving him what he wants. Ignoring him is also giving him what he wants, because we are not his target audience. This is the trap they have built for us. This is the trap we have built for ourselves. All I can do is examine the video in excruciating detail to see if it can help us unlock the secrets of the universe.

Before we go any further, my standalone novel I’m Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom is $2.99 in ebook form for the month of June 2025. If you only know me from my wonderful podcast appearances and always assumed my books were a bunch of bullshit, here’s your chance to try one for the price of two bites of a cheeseburger.

“Who’s Andrew Tate?” asks at least one reader, unaware that he is about to lose an ignorance more precious than jewels. I could answer with this frame from three seconds into the aforementioned video:

But no, I can’t just throw you into the middle like that. Let’s back up. Until a few months ago, I thought Tate was just one of those D-list celebrities who figured out they could make two hundred bucks a month posting anti-woke ragebait on Twitter. Then I heard pundits referring to him as one of the most influential people in the world and found out that, apparently, every other teenage boy I pass on the street worships him.

Tate is a former kickboxer who attempted to prolong his fame by appearing on the British version of Big Brother in 2016. He then pivoted to various crimes (his legal cases require their own Wikipedia page) before realizing he could get much richer by telling young men that all of their worst hormonal impulses are good, actually. He has a podcast and sells online lifestyle courses that alone earn him–let me just double-check this–about $70 million dollars a year. To put that in context, that’s more than twice what this entire website makes.

So this video, posted to X, takes place in Tate’s mansion in Dubai. The camera begins on the opposite side of the room, setting the scene over inspirational synth:

“I don’t see the big deal,” you say upon viewing the video’s opening second. “This appears to be a nude muscular man doing three reps with 25-pound dumbells while executing shitcoin rugpulls with his cock. This is exactly two variables away from my own morning routine.”

But then the camera swoops in and we get the frame I showed you earlier, and it is here where I must pause to explain the most important thing in the world, which is the Halloween Costume Hack.

It is well-established science that if you want to override the logic centers of the public’s brains, you simply become a Halloween costume. If you assemble a distinctive and memorable combination of hair, clothing and props (that is, become something so recognizable that kids could dress as you for Halloween), people will listen to whatever dumb shit you have to say. This is why most of you could improvise a Donald Trump costume with what you have around the house (a suit, a messy yellow thing on your head, something tan to smear on your face). You could turn yourself into a recognizable Hitler with nothing more than a sharpie.

Seriously, look around. Have you seen Mark Zuckerberg recently, with his new t-shirt, chain and poofy hair combo? He’s not having a midlife crisis; he’s doing the Halloween Costume Hack.

To be clear, I’m not saying this is only used for evil. One of America’s most treasured content creators, Mark Twain, intentionally created a costume for himself once he figured out that being a full-time celebrity paid more than writing books.

So if it seems like the world recently became a flailing orgy of clownish derangement, that is the result of several million influencers all figuring out this hack at once. The problem is that in the era of total audience access, they’re never allowed to take off the costume so, inevitably, the mask eats the face.

Everything becomes part of the costume: the diet, the decor, the philosophy, the language made up entirely of trademarked catchphrases. When you have to eat, drink and sleep the kayfabe, that’s just who you are. The world becomes a circus in which every other clown is John Wayne Gacy.

Anyway, we’re now four seconds into this video and when the cameraman reaches the sofa, we realize we’re observing a man who has become a costume. Here is a creature birthed from a simultaneous desire to create envy in his fans, outrage in his haters, and car-accident curiosity in everyone else. We see someone famous for his rabid homophobia wearing white slippers and gold-trimmed shorts, sucking on a glittery hookah. Not only does he want us to make the obvious joke, his business model depends on it.

Instead, I’m going to talk about the fact that health and fitness influencers these days have to find ways to be original, which is impossible if you stick to the same boring old advice people have been spouting forever, due to it being true. Tate, therefore, leans heavily into calling nicotine a “miracle drug” and insisting that smoking it prevents homosexuality. Again: he’s daring you to make the joke.

He also boasts that he drinks 10 cups of coffee in the morning and eats tons of meat. He wants you to yell that this is a recipe for a heart that detonates before 50, because all that yelling is engagement and engagement is money. This is the madness of the modern age, a twisted four-link chain of logic that goes,

A) “You should live your life how you want, even if it makes the haters mad!” Therefore,

B) “You know you’re living life right if your haters are mad!” Therefore,

C) “Your goal in life should be to make your haters mad!” Therefore,

D) “You should sacrifice everything else in your life to make your haters mad!”

Kids in trailer parks thus swarm to Tate’s defense in the face of any criticism, wallowing in the anguish of the haters who are spouting petty bullshit like, “Please do not do this to your body, you want to live long enough to see your children grow up, you have so much to live for, we love you.” Sure, those teenage boys can observe that Tate’s advice hasn’t resulted in any of their friends owning a mansion in Dubai, but it has resulted in causing distress to the haters and that is what matters most when all other aspirations feel unattainable. We’re nine seconds into the video.

The camera has now swept around Tate to get a glimpse of his carefully-arranged breakfast table. A cappucino, a steak with three fried eggs that kind of look fake, a bucket of canned Perrier. Something else is hidden behind his laptop stand, intentionally placed as to hold the reveal until the end. This has all been planned and/or storyboarded in advance.

If you know the manosphere, you understand why nothing green can appear on that plate. Boys tend to hate vegetables and have spent their lives arguing with mothers who wouldn’t let them leave the table until they at least took a bite of the broccoli. “Actually, eating nothing but meat and eggs is heroic!” says the influencer. “All of your base preferences are sacred! Every primal urge from your hormonal brain is just your inner hero shining through! Anyone who tries to direct you otherwise is a literal traitor to the species!”

Next we see Tate taking a pull from his hookah, then downing a bunch of cappuccino at the same time, as if attempting to mix the smoke and coffee in his mouth.

This made me a bit sad and, to understand why, you need to pause here and go watch the entirety of the show Severance on Apple TV (plus? Is there a plus at the end? Eh, probably).

Welcome back, you no doubt noticed the way the camera in that show dramatically swings all around the room to symbolize the inner turmoil of the actors or some shit. This is accomplished with a rig on a robot arm and it makes life hell for the performers, who have to carefully time their actions and facial expressions to the pre-determined movements of the giant robot shooting the scene. It can take months to perfect a single sequence.

So when we see Tate awkwardly juggle his hookah and coffee, I am very confident that we are watching at least the twentieth attempt to get this right. I think at some point they realized that the camera movement wouldn’t allow time for him to separately smoke and then take a drink, so they kept compressing the actions until he was inventing the new activity of smoke-drinking, presumably coughing himself onto the floor the first time he tried it. I’m also confident that the plate of steak and eggs went uneaten, as it was likely cooked purely to be a prop for the shoot. I don’t know, I could be wrong. Maybe his dogs got it.

Finally, the camera swings around and zooms down on the breakfast table to show that next to the plate is a stack of cash in various foreign currencies and a carefully-arranged pile of watches. I’ll admit that it wasn’t until my 73rd viewing of the video that I noticed the watches are all set to different times and none match the time on the watch Tate is wearing. This would be a wonderfully whimsical bit of detail if this were a video intended to satirize a fictional character, which of course it is, if you think about it, which you shouldn’t.

I realize this 23-second video leaves us with several hundred unanswered questions, so I’ll end this with a brief Q&A:

Q: “What exactly is this video promoting, again?”

A: Andrew Tate and the perfect male life he is living.

Q: “Right, but is he selling classes that he claims will teach men how to have what they see in the video?”

A: Yes, but that’s the wrong question. The real question is, what are they seeing in the video? What is the thing he is actually selling?

Q: “The costume. He’s offering to teach men how to project a certain lifestyle, regardless of whether or not they are actually living it or if it even reflects their own preferences. He’s offering to teach them how they can make others feel the envy they are feeling toward Tate, because knowing they have created envy in others is the only true riches in the social media age. Is that right?”

A: Almost. You need to go a couple of layers deeper. Do you really think anyone who takes Tate’s classes actually thinks they will wind up even with the appearance of his life, with the muscles, mansions and Bugattis? Do you think that’s the part teen boys envy?

Q: “You’re saying they actually envy that he’s in a position to piss everybody off and get away with it. Because that’s what so many young males wish they could do, escape the confines of public shaming and social convention.”

A: Exactly. “With my training, you will have a mindset that allows you to ignore critics.” And now we must ask, what is the specific activity that those critics will be criticizing the most?

Q: “Spending hundreds of dollars on Andrew Tate’s classes and overpriced merch that promises it ‘SENDS A SIGNAL TO THE WORLD.’ He doesn’t have to deliver results because for those teens, making everyone mad is the result. Right?”

A: Yep.

Q: “But don’t they see that no ‘alpha’ would submit to another male by parroting his catchphrases and paying him for the right to be branded with his logo? Do his fans seriously not notice the contradiction? ‘Real men don’t play by the rules, so let me show you the even stricter rules you need to play by in order to not have to play by rules anymore.’”

A: Not only do they not see it, but there is still one more layer to the madness. Ask yourself: If Tate wanted to change his lifestyle, to shed the costume and admit it’s all a sham, could he? Maintaining his wealth and influence requires him to give his audience what they want. Remember, he carefully crafted this image based on engagement, this video is him meticulously recreating a fantasy he gleaned from the algorithm. Knowing that his vicious fandom will turn on him the moment he tries to pivot, is he locked into this to the bitter end? Cult members escape all the time, the leaders almost never do. Note: This is what Fight Club was actually about.

Q: “So all of them are trapped in the same psychotic labyrinth, the flock mimicking the shepherd who is mimicking the expectations of the flock, until some kind of tragic disaster finally breaks the spell?”

A: Yes. All of us are.

Anyway, the new book is three bucks this month.

Jason Pargin still writes old Cracked-style columns at his Substack. He is famous on TikTok.

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Russell Bauman, who doesn’t wear watches or acknowledge the existence of time. That shit is way beneath him.