No, Andrew Tate did not get arrested via a Romanian pizza box
No, Andrew Tate did not get arrested via a Romanian pizza box
The final note to cap off 2022
I know I technically retired this publication after the fifth edition, but this story is really a prime example of an Internet falsehood. And I was bored out of my mind on a 12-hour plane flight. So here we go:
The unlikeliest of social media interactions
Andrew Tate is a former kickboxer turned influencer that promotes misogynistic messages. Styling himself in a “hustler” aesthetic, he preaches that the modern-day man has been emasculated, and needed to be more alpha and grind for materialistic gains. Most worryingly, his meteoric rise can be seen in his fanbase, who are teenage boys who feel they’ve been shafted by society. A seedy figure, he moved from the UK to Romania for its more lax controls on human trafficking. Keep this in mind for later.
Tate was booted off Twitter earlier in 2022, but was allowed to return during Musk’s wave of unbanning controversial figures.
For some reason after coming back to Twitter, he randomly picked a spat with climate activist Greta Thunberg, mentioning her and flexing that he owns 33 cars.
In response, Thunberg says:
Of course, Mr. Tate just had to reply in his typical extravagant fashion, posting a two minute video about how he doesn’t recycle and how he’s totally not owned.
This small little Internet spat seems to have ended, but the biggest revelation was yet to come.
The real pizzagate?
A day after this weird matchup, Tate and his brother would be arrested by Romanian authorities on charges of human trafficking and rape, which the authorities have been investigating him for.
In the immediate aftermath of news, a journalist came up and explained the reason of the arrest:
However, this was not actually confirmed by Romanian authorities, and the rumor was actually refuted by the prosecutor:
It is a very amusing story but it is not true. We executed a search warrant yesterday but the decision had already been made before his message [with the pizza box], then it was authorized by a judge. The prosecutor indicates that five searches took place on Thursday and that the police had “ensured that the two brothers [were] in Romania before acting. We use all kinds of information, such as those in public sources, but they are not the only ones used”
The tweet seems to be rather a conjecture and some sort of personal analysis of the events.
As is all things with the Internet, the more “wacky” version is the one that went viral. Popular accounts shared the theory, meaning that more people were exposed to the this version, and because corrections were not issued until later, this was the only explanation that most people are familiar of.
Journalist Ben Dreyfuss wrote more extensively about how the media got this part of the story wrong.
And some credit to Alejandra Caraballo, she actually went back and explained her line of thinking and what she got wrong.
I do agree that the pizza box arrest theory is way funnier and poetic than what is probably the reality, and Thunberg’s replies are definitely ones for the ages, but I am humorless and feel the need to make sure you, dear readers, are aware of the actual truth.
There is a funny twist though in the story: the organization that called on Romania to better enforce human trafficking laws is named Group of Experts on Actions against Trafficking in Human Being, or commonly referred to GRETA for short. So in a convoluted way, GRETA did get Andrew Tate arrested.
Thank you for reading this actually final edition of HTTPS Addict, and please subscribe to Cosmopolitanism of Nations if you’d like to continue reading my works!
The official statement makes it clear that the pizza video was not the *direct cause* of the arrest. But it's ambiguous on what role it *did* play.
"We use all kinds of information, such as those in public sources, but they are not the only ones used."
In seeking final confirmation of his position, it *may* have been a contributing factor.