It’s been two months since misogynistic influencer Andrew Tate was arrested along with his brother and two alleged coconspirators on human trafficking charges.
As Tate continues pleading his innocence and insisting that he’s been set up by “the Matrix,” one question weighs on many minds: What is going on with his Twitter account?
After a months-long investigation, Romanian authorities arrested Tate on Dec. 29. He is charged with rape, human trafficking, and forming an organized crime ring. He has remained incarcerated since then.
Being behind bars hasn’t stopped him from sharing his carceral experience, ruminations on life, and endlessly promoting his get-rich-quick businesses on Twitter. It’s not clear how he’s managed to tweet from jail, but one of his allies told Insider that Tate is using his lawyer as an intermediary to tell his team what to tweet on his behalf.
Questions about how and whether Tate is personally accessing his account aside, his Twitter feed has become something of a morbid curiosity over the last two months. Much of the content is the mix of braggadocio, defiance, and entry-level mysticism combined with self-help that characterizes the Tate brand. For example, Tate recently claimed that each day he does 500 squats, 500 pushups, walks 10 kilometers, practices something he calls “tiger paw technique,” writes lesson plans for his subscribers, and responds to hundreds of letters—all from inside his cell.
“You have all your freedom of movement. You have unlimited information and accessibility at your fingertips,” he wrote. “If my days in this cell are more productive than yours, you should be furious with yourself. It means you are failing. How will you ever reach greatness when you do not even outperform a man in a jail cell?”
This boastful claim might not have the same shimmer as his pre-confinement tweets about his car collection, sexual conquests, and riches, but it is in line with the arrogant image he’s cultivated of a man whose sheer will and work ethic have brought him fame and fortune beyond most people’s wildest dreams.
Then there are the other tweets. In between promoting his businesses, such as one where subscribers pay $49.99/month to “experience the future of learning,” Tate parlance for making money online, he has posted some things that have people questioning his grip on reality.
He’s long been conspiratorial-minded, particularly since his most recent troubles with the law began (he’s been investigated for rape multiple times). But some of his jailhouse tweets are on another level.
Last week, Tate claimed that he fought a ghost in his cell.
“I was awoken last night by an icy chill and identified a ghost in my prison cell,” he wrote. “He was terrified and begged me not to annihilate him. I sent him back to hell with a message for the demons. I am always ready.”
Also last week, he appeared to contend that is literally possible for humans to fly without assistance.
“Imagine how much harder some men would work if it was possible. The amount of work ethic inspired by witnessing a man train his arms to move so hard and fast that he could fly,” he said. “There is power in knowing something is possible.”
Although these tweets are written as if they’re meant to be taken as true, it is possible that Tate was speaking metaphorically.
Either way, the posts have been been the subject of intense interest. “Was it the Ghost of In-cells Past?” @MikeStuchbery_ quipped of his tweet about fighting a ghost.
A Reddit post mocking his claim about practicing “tiger paw technique” generated over 800 comments, most making fun of him.
While many people are taking obvious pleasure dragging him online, Tate’s Twitter feed has also led some people to wonder if he’s actually speaking in code.
Some of his followers have attempted to find the true meaning of his tweets. They were riveted when Tate tweeted, “God is constantly trying to speak to you if you’re paying attention,” and said he is assigned to “room number 5” and thus is “the man from room 5.”
Theories about what he could possibly mean piled up in the comments. One surmised that the number represents “grace.” Others suggested he was referring to “the call for Muslim prayer 5 times a day.” (Tate is Muslim.)
Many seemed to believe that Tate was signifying that he will get out of jail and possibly exact revenge on those responsible for his incarceration.
One person took his tweet to be a reference to a nursery rhyme commemorating Guy Fawkes leading an ultimately unsuccessful plot to blow up the British Houses of Parliament in 1605, for which he and his coconspirators were convicted of treason and executed.
Others divined that Tate was alluding to the Roman numeral for five, V, further surmising that this was somehow a reference to V for Vendetta. The titular character in that 2005 film wears a Guy Fawkes mask, which is popular in the online conspiracy world.
No one but Tate, or whoever’s tweeting for him, knows what these strange and sometimes cryptic tweets really mean.
Is he genuinely considering starting a show similar to Judge Judy, as he tweeted on Feb. 23? Did he actually update his will to leave 100 million in an unspecified currency to help men fight false accusations, which he said on Feb. 5? Does Andrew Tate actually believe that humans can flap their arms hard and fast enough to fly?
Or is he simply shoving content into the timeline in the hopes of drawing attention to his plight and rustling up cash from people who still believe that he can teach them how to get rich online?
These and other questions remain unanswered, but one thing is clear: The internet is riveted.
