A rising wave of ‘Andrew Tate’ content has plagued the internet since 2022. Despite how things ended with the misogynist influencer – he’s on trial for alleged sex trafficking – his content has now formed a generation of young men with a sexist, misogynist and aggressively disturbing mindset.
On the other end of this ‘motivational’ content spectrum are the female self-love gurus who have made it their mission to end ‘alpha’ men like Tate. These gurus and their followers are self-proclaimed ‘Femme Fatales’, who want to tap into their ‘dark’ feminine energy. Most of the content they put out could be ‘healing’ and honestly much needed for women today – it can sometimes border over to ‘radical feminist’ territory, and sometimes it’s just plain problematic, like this Twitter thread by a popular influencer on ‘How to steal someone’s boyfriend’.
This growing community has a few influencers at the forefront, like Kanika Batra, a ‘diagnosed sociopath’ who shares life advice for women from the perspective of an unempathetic person. TheWizardLiz, a YouTuber with 3.75M subscribers, is another content creator churning out ‘self-love’ content for women. Her usual topics focus on encouraging women to ‘stop dating broke guys’ and to ‘detach from people and situations’. A lot of their content – and that of chronically online Instagram accounts dedicated to promoting a ‘Femme Fatale lifestyle – heavily promotes manipulation, encouraging revenge – in contrast to the ‘forgive and forget’ idea that early self-help content encouraged. It’s a much darker, and more spiritual take on the ‘girl boss’ of the late 2010s.
On social media, videos under the tag ‘dark feminine energy’ have millions of views – lots of the popular videos angle this guidance as a way to manipulate men, bring back an ex or become “instantly more attractive”. The information may be about bettering yourself, but the aim is often to either get men to have sex with you or make them regret and suffer for rejecting you. And then sometimes the content even encourages animosity between women, telling them to stop trusting anyone and cut off people. The deeper you dig into this rabbit hole you’ll find that cringe alpha male content and this dark feminine energy content are more or less two sides of the same coin.
This kind of ‘self-help spirituality’ content seems to empower on the surface level, but it could influence a harmful and somewhat narcissistic mindset in young women.
There is a thin line between self-love and full-on selfishness. In its radical quest for self-acceptance, a lot of this content encourages a ‘kill or be killed’ attitude and is brewing a competitive mindset among young women. So while it’s very refreshing to see these women embrace their ‘dark selves’ and be so aggressively themselves in a world that wants them to be quiet – it’s always best to take their advice with a grain of salt.
