Recently, I heard that Andrew Tate and his brother were apparently arrested in Miami. At the time of me writing this journal, I've seen reports of numerous charges, including allegations involving "indecent images of a child" and "extreme pornography". However that ultimately plays out in court, I dunno, but none of it struck me as particularly surprising.
What interests me is what this says about the era we're living in. I mean, hasn't this jackass been blatantly telling us what he's about for years? So like, we have reached a point where people are showing us exactly who they are on the internet, often without hesitation no? Everyone has a platform. Everyone has a podcast. Everyone has an audience. And many people aren't accidentally revealing themselves anymore. They're deliberately saying outrageous, inflammatory, immoral, and sometimes even openly illegal things because they've learned there's an audience for it. Andrew Tate is just one example among many. This isn't limited to the manosphere or performative masculinity. It exists across politics, business, entertainment, social media, and countless other spaces.
People tell us who they are. We should probably believe them.
None of this is entirely new. There have always been loud, ugly personalities seeking attention. What feels different is the scale. Technology has made distribution effortless. Someone can broadcast reprehensible ideas to millions of people before breakfast, and by lunch they're monetizing it.
What concerns me isn't simply that technology allows this. It's that many of us have become numb to it. There's an understandable exhaustion that develops after years of constant outrage. Eventually people roll their eyes, scroll past, and think, "Someone else will deal with it." The authorities, the courts, the platforms, somebody. And to be fair, sometimes they do. Arrests happen. Investigations happen. Consequences exist. But they can only do so much.
Somewhere along the way we've become a little too comfortable tolerating behavior that should make us collectively recoil. There was a time when being openly cruel, openly dishonest, openly immoral, or proudly predatory carried genuine social consequences. Today it often takes an extraordinary level of depravity before someone is pushed outside the bounds of mainstream acceptance. Until then, they collect followers, sponsorships, podcast appearances, and brand deals.
We've accepted more than we should.
And when someone does speak up, the response is often, "Why are you complaining? You can't change the world. Just move on."
I don't think that's the right answer either.
We need a better balance. We don't need perpetual outrage over every disagreement, and we certainly don't need mobs searching for reasons to destroy people over every mistake. But we've drifted too far in the opposite direction, where obvious patterns of disgusting behavior are shrugged off because confronting them is inconvenient or socially exhausting.
There are, of course, degrees to all of this. Morality isn't binary. People disagree about countless issues, and reasonable people can arrive at different conclusions. I'm not talking about ordinary disagreements. I'm talking about conduct that falls somewhere between blatantly depraved and depravity-adjacent, if you will, behavior that should make decent people uncomfortable regardless of political affiliation or ideology.
We should be more willing to say so.
Power doesn't always come from elected office. Sometimes it simply comes from money, influence, and visibility. My understanding is that Andrew Tate purchased a multi-million-dollar Koenigsegg at some point. Fine. Christian von Koenigsegg runs a business, and there are very few people on Earth who can afford one of his cars. I'm not interested in vilifying him or pretending business decisions are simple moral equations.
But it does raise a broader question.
At what point do we collectively decide that someone's public conduct outweighs the value of doing business with them? At what point do we say, "No, I'd rather not participate"?
My own broke-ass artist career isn't going to affect people operating at that level. I'm under no illusion that my purchasing decisions are somehow going to reshape society. But I can still say what I think. I can still refuse to normalize behavior that shouldn't be normalized. And maybe most importantly, I can make sure my own kids, who are adults now, have always understood that some things deserve more than a shrug and a "scroll past."
People are understandably afraid of being accused of participating in "cancel culture," and sometimes that accusation is fair. Public shaming can absolutely become irrational, vindictive, and detached from reality. But fear of overcorrecting shouldn't become an excuse for saying nothing at all. Too many people seem content to look away because they have enough problems of their own, and I understand that impulse. I really do.
I just don't think silence is always neutrality.
Sometimes it's permission.
I don't want to live in a culture where openly awful people feel completely comfortable broadcasting exactly who they are because they know most of us will either cheer, monetize them, or quietly look the other way. I think we owe ourselves something better than that.