Flynn Martin, the Aussie TikToker who went viral for his infamous Yo-Chi date story last year, has admitted to being “slightly radicalised” by masculinity influencers like Andrew Tate.
ICYMI, the Melbourne influencer was at the centre of much controversy last August, when his video recalling a “nightmare date” in which he paid for a girl’s Yo-Chi order took off like wildfire on social media.
Martin was roasted for complaining about having to pay for his date’s Yo-Chi, describing it as “outrageous” in a TikTok video that has now been viewed more than five million times.
Prior to that, Martin again found himself in hot water over a separate TikTok video in which he asked his female followers if it was “OK to be a straight white male”.
“What’s wrong with being fit, healthy [and] not gay?” Martin asked in the video, which has since been removed from his profile. “Without people like me, you don’t reproduce.”
It drew criticism from fellow Aussie TikTokers like Will Gibb and Sopha Dopha at the time, and now Martin has addressed the sentiments of that video during an interview on the On It Off It podcast released on Thursday.
“I think I was also slightly radicalised,” Martin told podcast hosts Louis Phillips and Fergus Neal, before name-dropping manosphere figurehead Tate.
“It was really during that period where Andrew Tate just aggressively came onto everyone’s For You Page,” Martin said.
While Martin claimed he “never really bought into” toxic masculinity content like Tate’s, he admitted he may have “subconsciously” taken on some of those ideas before making the TikTok video.
“Subconsciously, consuming that much content that’s just suddenly appearing on your feed … I guess in some way it probably trickled into my own brain a little bit,” Martin said.
He went on to reflect on being a “young, angry dude” at the time of the TikTok, and said he now thinks the sentiments he expressed in the video make “zero sense”.
Martin said the backlash over the TikTok led to “meaningful conversations” with people explaining why “what I said was wrong”.
Elsewhere in the podcast, Martin said he was “annoyed” he wasn’t given a brand deal with Yo-Chi following his viral TikTok.
“I didn’t make a cent from it, and I reckon they made so much fucking money,” he said.
Martin’s comments come amid broader conversations around the so-called manosphere, with a report finding in April that 68 per cent of Aussie men engage with “harmful” masculinity content on social media on a regular basis.
More recently, Jeff Kissubi shared his thoughts with PEDESTRIAN.TV after appearing as a panelist for a masculinity debate hosted by SBS earlier this month.
