Controversial manosphere influencer Andrew Tate is asking his fans to make videos about his dying grandmother in what critics believe could be an attempt to flee justice in Romania.
Subscribers to Tate’s online educational platform, The Real World, have been offered a reward to create social media videos appealing for Tate and his brother and co-accused, Tristan Tate, to be allowed to travel to the United States – where they hold citizenship – to visit their grandmother before she dies. The brothers are facing charges in Romania of human trafficking, rape and forming an organised crime group.
Videos by VICE
Critics say the episode is a vivid illustration of how The Real World, pitched as an “educational hub” providing young people with valuable business skills, is being used to cynically exploit young men into acting as part of Tate’s online PR machine.
VICE News has been provided with a screenshot of a message posted on a chatboard for The Real World on Saturday by Tate’s cousin, Luc Tate, who acts as a “professor” on the site. The post offered a “bounty,” or reward, of unspecified value for the subscribers who created the 20 most viewed video posts in support of the campaign to see Grandma Tate.
“Grandma Tate is sick and dying, she can’t travel. She wants to see Andrew and Tristan before she dies,” read the post. “The American embassy isn’t helping them make this real. [We] want the world to know about Grandma Tate’s condition… and ask the question: Why is this happening to American citizens?”
The post then instructs members – many of whom are young men and teenage boys – to create the videos using AI, or drawing on old clips of Tate talking about his grandmother.
The launch of the “Grandma Tate” campaign has led to many such videos being posted on social media platforms, where they have racked up thousands of views.
One video began with the text “Granny Tate needs your help” superimposed over footage of the brothers, as stirring music plays. It ends with a voiceover of Tate saying “she hasn’t seen me in, like, 10 years,” as a hashtag on screen reads: “#freethetates.” Another video claims: “Everyone knows the brothers are innocent and the allegations are false, and yet they cannot visit their loved ones during the most difficult time.”
One of Tate’s supporters posted an offer on X, the site formerly known as Twitter, to drive nearly 15 hours to Tate’s grandmother, purchase her gifts, then FaceTime Tate from her home when he arrived so he could speak to her.
The campaign has alarmed Tate’s critics, who see it as a clearcut example of the way that The Real World – rather than empowering Tate’s impressionable young followers with valuable business skills – instead exploits them to push his narratives online.
“It’s our opinion that [this] simply highlights the platform’s true intentions – to use and abuse its members for the Tate’s PR machine,” said Jennifer Sayles, trainee solicitor at McCue Jury & Partners, a law firm handling a civil case brought by women in the UK who say they were abused by Tate.
She told VICE News it was unclear what the Tates were hoping to achieve with their request to leave Romania to visit their grandmother. The brothers were released from house arrest in August, but are forbidden from leaving Romania while they await trial.
“We can only hope that they are not naive enough to believe that this alleged plot will allow them to evade accountability,” she said.
Disaffected former members of The Real World have described to VICE News how the platform incentivises its subscribers to produce social media videos promoting Tate and his platform. Subscribers are given access to a huge library of video clips of Tate to draw on, with the prospect of earning a commission from every new subscriber they recruit to the site through their content.
Nathan Pope, an Australian who has been campaigning for social media giants to remove material promoting The Real World from their platforms, said the “Grandma Tate” campaign highlighted the way Tate used the site to “manipulate [his] young fan base.”
“He appears to be using it to try and get out of Romania,” he told VICE News.
In September, Google and Apple removed The Real World app from their online stores, following VICE News’ questions about Pope’s campaign. However, videos promoting The Real World are still widely available on sites like YouTube, despite the video-sharing site being owned by Google’s parent company, Alphabet.
READ: Andrew Tate’s ‘The Real World’ app banned by Google amid claims it’s a pyramid scheme
Pope alleges that as well as functioning as a powerful PR machine for Tate, flooding the Internet with pro-Tate social media content, The Real World also functions as something resembling a giant pyramid scheme. While the site lures in new members – who are charged a monthly subscription fee of $49.99 – with promises to teach them the business skills to be soon earning $10,000 a month, former members have described to VICE News how the site’s primary prospect for generating any income is through recruiting others into joining.
This was facilitated through the site’s “affiliate marketing program,” in which members were required to aggressively promote Tate, his messages and his platform by editing Tate videos and posting them to social media, earning a commission from every new member they recruited through their content.
Tate’s attorney Joe McBride did not respond to questions from VICE News about the Tates’ request to leave Romania, whether it was a bid to avoid accountability on the criminal charges they face, and over the criticisms that The Real World is exploiting its members.
In response to previous questions from VICE News over the allegations that The Real World was a pyramid scheme, McBride sent through promotional videos for the platform featuring men speaking positively about their experiences with the site, saying the clips contradicted the “allegations about their business model.”
“You may not agree with Andrew and Tristan Tate’s message,” McBride said at the time. “But it is madness to suggest that their message of male empowerment rises to the level of criminality or dangerousness.”
U.S. officials refused to discuss the case with VICE News. A spokesperson for the U.S. Embassy in Bucharest said the embassy did not comment on cases regarding individual American citizens without a privacy act waiver, while a U.S. State Department spokesperson said: “As a general matter, we do not comment on ongoing legal proceedings.”
Romania’s Directorate for Investigating Organized Crime and Terrorism, which brought the charges against the Tates, also did not respond to a request for comment.
