Violent misogynist and alleged human trafficker Andrew Tate is now promoting dangerous incel culture to his audience of millions.

Tate and his associates have teamed up with and are promoting an anime-obsessed content creator and misanthrope who glorifies school shooters, pushes Holocaust denial, and promotes the hyper-sexualization of underage girls. 

Tate and his acolytes Justin Waller and “Sneako” have aligned themselves with “Waifu Watchers,” a viral content creator who appears to be obsessed with sexualizing underage cartoon anime girls. Waifu Watchers’ content promotes an incel-aligned and misogynistic ideology; the same kind of extremist rhetoric that has led to real-world violence, harassment, and is correlated with mass shootings. 

This is an example of Tate and his adherents leaning into and helping to popularize violent incel culture while using Tate’s massively viral nature to push a new set of dangerous misogynistic ideas to his followers. This could be dangerous for Tate’s large fanbase, which includes susceptible kids and teens who idolize him. 

In May 2022, Tate bestowed Waifu Watchers with the title of “G of the week” after he made a TikTok gloating about being legally allowed to be sexually attracted to underage anime girls because they aren’t real. 

“I want you to follow this guy, Waifu Watchers. This is an official shoutout.” Tate’s co-host and brother Tristan said. “Can you follow this guy, everybody. He’s a fucking hero.” 

“Hero. He ain’t taking shit,” Tate added.

Recently, Tate posted a photo of himself wearing a “Waifu Watchers” jacket standing alongside two female anime characters. Tate and the influencer have been pictured together numerous times. Waifu Watchers claimed that he stayed with Tate for a week, and that Tate gifted him cryptocurrency.

Tate and his adherents' decision to platform and promote an anime-obsessed misogynistic edgelord continues the pattern of far-right figures using anime and Japanese entertainment to push dubious narratives. 

What is a waifu?

According to Dictionary.com, a “waifu” is “a term for a fictional character, usually in anime or related media, that someone has great, and sometimes romantic, affection for.” The term is taken from the English word for “wife.”

Some anime consumers have a “pseudo-intimate relationship” with waifus. This becomes insidious when anime watchers fixate on underage female characters as waifus, as some of these characters are drawn to be hyper-sexualized and fit coming of age stories. 

Waifu Watchers promotes extremist and predatory views to his audience 

Online, Waifu Watchers has promoted the sexualization of underage cartoon girls, Holocaust denial, and the glorification of school shooters. The influencer goes by “chaiinmail chase” in some of his videos. 

Here’s a breakdown of the content creator’s history of pushing extremist views: 

• In a YouTube Shorts video, the influencer douses himself with what he pretends is the urine of an underage-looking anime girl. 
• In another YouTube Shorts video, the content creator celebrated the sound of a female anime character getting her finger broken and screaming. 
• On various occasions, Waifu Watchers has posted misogynistic content about women. 
• The content creator made a fake Joe Rogan interview with an anime character where she defends Hitler and promotes Holocaust denial.

• During a vlog, the influencer said “I would never shoot up a school” unless it was a place that was “indoctrinating” kids into believing that three million Jews died during the Holocaust. He bleeped out the word Holocaust during the entirety of the vlog. 
• During the same vlog, he told his audience, “I hope you’re keeping those streets clean and those schools empty.” 
• The influencer sells t-shirts that glorify school shooters, rapper Ye’s (formerly Kanye West) “White Lives Matter” stunt, and convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. 
• The content creator posted a photo of himself holding what appear to be firearms with the words “don’t log into twitter tomorrow,” appearing to refer to the phrase “don’t come to school tomorrow,” which was popularized as a meme following the Umpqua Community College shooting. 

• He admitted to making a fake, racist article that went viral on social media.

Some of the influencer’s YouTube content may violate the platform's terms of service against hate speech. Earlier this year, YouTube began monetizing YouTube Shorts for creators. Some of the short videos feature outright bigotry and misogyny. Tate’s own content is reportedly all over YouTube Shorts, despite being banned from the platform.  

Online misogyny leads to real-world violence 

Online misogyny has led to real-world violence and harassment. Incel culture and domestic violence have inspired mass shootings across the country. 

Early manosphere influencers were a critical driver of Gamergate, a harassment campaign against women who worked in the video game industry that pushed violent misogyny and anti-feminism. Several women received death and rape threats for years from online harassers. 

Viral influencers like Tate and Sneako promoting hateful or misogynistic content online have reminded some audiences online of the rhetoric that was used to attack women during Gamergate.