Greta Thunberg's has served a masterclass in dealing with toxic masculinity, with her concise Twitter takedown of Andrew Tate, a so-called men's rights activist who's found notoriety on TikTok.
ICYMI, it all started when Tate, seemingly unprovoked, tweeted eco-activist Greta a list of his cars and their respective ‘enormous’ emissions. Quite apart from the fact that the stupidity of boasting about this is laughable in itself, there’s little quite so enduring as the cliché of men buying flashy sports cars to boost their egos.
When Greta quite rightly took the opportunity presented to her on a plate and directed Tate to email her at smalldickenergy@getalife.co.uk, the internet was delighted.
Now, far be it from us to body shame (or to ponder the state of Andrew Tate’s genitals – shudder), it’s important to note that Small Dick Energy – along with it’s more aspirational brother, Big Dick Energy – is less about the size of someone’s penis and more about the quiet confidence, or lack thereof, that a person exudes. In Tate and his 33 cars’ case, it’s less serene self-assurance and more glaringly transparent insecurity.
But obviously someone like Tate couldn’t allow the teenager he’d tried to mock to have the last laugh, and so ten hours later put out a video of him smoking a cigar in a wood-panelled room giving what he clearly thinks is a scathing take down of Greta’s slick comeback. He even managed to slip in a completely-not-staged pizza delivery where he instructed whatever minion he’d roped into the embarrassing debacle to ‘make sure those aren’t recycled’.
Tate’s attempt at having the last word has fallen spectacularly flat. Whatever Tate thought he was doing with his 'comeback', he’s only cemented those small-dick-energy vibes and given us, the captivated public, even more to laugh at this betwixtmas.
‘Greta has rattled Andy so hard that he’s got dressed in a dressing gown and staged himself receiving pizza,’ tweeted journalist Matthew Stadlen. ‘Not a fan of the word “owned”, but I’ll make an exception for Andy, who’s been emphatically owned.’
‘Not sure what’s more embarrassing… this response or the fact it took you ten hours to come up with it,’ said another, while one more wrote, ‘Dear oh dear Andrew, that’s the least “alpha” comeback I think I’ve ever seen.’
Greta – 1, Andrew Tate – STILL a very big fat 0.