explainer

'Small d*ck energy.' Why everyone is talking about Andrew Tate and Greta Thunberg.

It all started with a rogue tweet.

Andrew Tate, the former kickboxer and self-proclaimed misogynist who has only recently been allowed back onto Twitter, tagged Greta Thunberg in a tweet about his car collection on December 27. 

Clearly looking to start an argument with the 19-year-old climate activist, he wrote: "Hello Greta Thunberg. I have 33 cars. My Bugatti has a w16 8.0L quad turbo. My TWO Ferrari 812 competizione have 6.5L v12s. This is just the start."

Then he requested her email address so he could send her the full list of of his car collections and their "respective enormous emissions".

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Greta Thunberg took 24 hours to respond via Twitter but simply said: "Yes, please do enlighten me. Email me at smalldickenergy@getalife.com."

*Mic drop*

While Tate's original tweet earned 13.8k retweets, Thunberg's response garnered 583.7k retweets and over 700 million views. The hashtag #smalldickenergy began to trend, and it was clear who had won the internet that day.

Hundreds of memes were born as the internet decided Thunberg had 'owned' the controversial social media influencer.

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Unsurprisingly, Tate wasn't happy to leave the Twitter exchange there. 

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On December 29, he released a two-minute video featuring him in a red bathrobe, smoking a cigar and eating pizza.

In the strange and incoherent rant, Tate questioned Thunberg's tweet, her gender, and said that he wasn't mad at her because "she doesn't realise she's been programmed or that she is a slave of the matrix."

By this point, the internet seemed embarrassed for Tate or at the very least confused that he didn't understand the joke.

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And it didn't end there. 

One of the 6.5 million people to watch Tate's video response was the Romanian authorities, who have been waiting to question Tate and his brother Tristan over human trafficking allegations. 

The pizza box shown in the bizarre video clip came from the Romanian brand 'Jerrys', and it was that visual confirmation that proved he was in the country, leading police to swoop in on Tate's luxury mansion and take the brothers away in handcuffs.

Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.

According to Romanian media site Libertatea, the Tate brothers are now being detained for 24 hours in relation to an ongoing investigation into suspected human trafficking, rape, and the formation of an organised crime group.

Back in April, police found two young women, one of whom has American citizenship, in a villa belonging to the Tate brothers. The women claimed they were being held against their will.

Tate's whole celebrity status was built on his misogynistic social media clips targeting vulnerable young men and boys. At his peak, he had millions of followers across TikTok, Instagram, and Twitch before mostly being de-platformed on social media for his extreme views earlier this year.

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While the world watches and waits to see whether Andrew and Tristan Tate face real-world consequences for their extremism, no one will forget the fact this chain of events was started by Tate's own hubris and a take down by Greta Thunberg.

Oh, and a pizza.

Feature Image: Twitter/Getty/Canva.

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