Alpha Male

Widows & Warbrides

warbrides  

I received the following Tweet from a reader this week:

Hi Rollo, thanks for all of your amazing work. I think one topic that you have not touched upon in detail is the conflict between alpha widowhood and war bride dynamic. If women are constitutionally inclined to move on, then how can they remain sad about their ex alpha lovers? Even if alpha’s SMV was much higher than her, isn’t the whole point of the war bride dynamic is to enable a woman to move on and reproduce without lingering thoughts of her former lovers? This happened to me recently when I had to end a relationship due to unacceptable logistics (long distance). What followed was extreme anxiety on her part about losing me. So this contradicted with what I always hear about women moving on easily.

This was a great question, and one I haven’t addressed before (no, I haven’t written everything), so I thought I’d pick this one apart today.

The TL;DR version is this: Women only ‘widow’ for men that made an Alpha impression on them. If their previous Alpha was somehow ‘killed’ and replaced by a lesser man, their hindbrains resist that man’s authority over her while using her previous Alpha as the lesser man’s SMV (sexual market value) benchmark. In the most extreme examples, a woman who’s been forced to accept the authority of a lesser man who defeated her former Alpha will resist him and/or plot revenge for the idealized lover.

Historical accounts and various cultural fiction are rife with this archetypal story. The woman who is married off to a lesser man or becomes the War Bride of an undeserving rival (usually by subterfuge or sinister means) is an archetype because it reflects women’s deepest evolutionary, existential, fear – to have her Hypergamous sexual selection strategy forcibly chosen for her by a man (or men) who are undeserving or are suboptimal breeding prospects. As I mentioned, this is an existential fear for women; anything less than unilateral control over her own Hypergamous destiny is tantamount to rape. The fear is that she will spend her life raising the child(ren) of a suboptimal man.

War Brides

The premise of the War Brides dynamic is thus: Evolution selected for women who could more easily transition psychologically from one dominant male to another. In our chaotic ancestral past women and girls were a commodity to be preserved for a conquering tribe. While men or boys were either killed or enslaved, fertile age women would be preserved as spoils of conquest for superior, invading, men. Simply put, women have reproductive value – men (and often their sons) were mostly obstacles in the way of resource acquisition and those reproductive opportunities.

That may seem like a bleak proposition to a Blue Pill conditioned mind today. We want to believe in some egalitarian dream of humanism and cooperation, but our evolved, ancestral past is responsible for what we are today in terms of base biological and psychological imperatives. I first proposed this theory in War Brides:

“Evolution has largely selected-for human females with a capacity to form psychological schema that preserve their psyches from what would otherwise afflict them with debilitating anxiety, guilt, and the stresses resulting from being continuously aware of their own behavioral incongruities. Evolution selects-for solipsistic women who are blissfully unaware of their solipsism.”

A lot of critics of the Red Pill make two key mistakes in their assessment of basic truths. One is that we don’t fully consider the dynamic, and/or two, we think too much about it. The fundamentals we consider about female nature, with respect to women’s psyches, are rooted in our evolutionary past. So, when I deconstruct certain aspects of that nature I have to ask the question, “why would a dynamic be something beneficial to women and/or our species on whole?” When I consider Hypergamy, female solipsism, women’s collectivist mindset, or any number of other characteristics the question I’m going to ask is why is this dynamic still present in modern women, and what are the outcomes of that dynamic in today’s environment?

Look at the obesity epidemic in western cultures today. 68% of adults in the U.S. are overweight today and 34% are morbidly obese. Childhood obesity is at an all time high. Evolutionarily speaking this is the result of how our metabolism evolved to solve certain environmental challenges we faced. Back then food was scarce. Finding a way to insure we fed ourselves and our tribe was at a premium and our biology adapted to give us the best chance of survival. Today this metabolism is a liability in an environment where food is plentiful and what we need to do to get it is much less strenuous. That’s the quick way to illustrate what I’m getting at in the War Brides dynamic:

Given the harsh realities that women had to endure since the Paleolithic era, it served them better to psychologically evolve a sense of self that was more resilient to the brutal changes she could expect to be subjected to. Consider the emotional investment a woman needs to put into mothering a child that could be taken away or killed at a moment’s notice. Anxiety, fear, guilt, insecurity are all very debilitating emotions, however it’s women’s innate psychology that makes them more durable to these stresses. Statistically, men have far greater difficulty in coping with psychological trauma (think PTSD) than women. Why should that be? On the face of it you may think that men’s better ability to rationally remove themselves from the emotional would make them better at coping with psychological trauma, but the reverse is actually the case. Women seem to have a better ability to accept emotional sacrifice and move on, either ignoring those stresses or blocking them entirely from their conscious awareness. Women possessing a more pronounced empathic capacity undoubtedly served our species in nurturing young and understanding tribal social dynamics, however it was also a liability with regards to a hostile change in her environment. Stockholm Syndrome is far more pronounced in female captives, why should that be? Because women’s ancestral environment dictated the need to develop psychological mechanisms to help them survive. It was the women who could make that emotional disconnect when the circumstances necessitated it who survived and lived to breed when their tribe was decimated by a superior force. This is also known as the War Bride dynamic; women develop an empathy with their conquerors by necessity.

So how does this relate to the Alpha Widow dynamic? Let’s parse that out a bit.

Alpha Widows

Alpha Widows are women who’ve had an Alpha man in their past make such an impression upon them that any man that comes along after him must essentially fight with that impression in order to replace him as the optimal Alpha in her life. This is usually the man a woman pines for from her Party Years. Often he’s the first guy who ever fulfilled her Hypergamous dance card. Generally, this man is at least her perceptual ideal of the sexual selection criteria she was prioritizing during that phase of her life. Usually this guy is her sexual ideal as well. That sexual impact forms a strong psychological attachment because the memories of the sex she had are associated with hormonal triggers. The memories of a significant Alpha male are enough to prompt a physical arousal response in women.

Furthermore, that Alpha impact is so significant it can alter her future sexual strategy for every man who comes after him. This is one reason women generally have a Plan B man on hold should that Alpha ideal not present himself, or should he not be ‘tamable‘ by her in the long term. Women’s long term sexual strategies tend to be punctuated by holding out for their ‘soul mate’ who also happened to be the best sex she’d ever had. Lesser men who follow in his wake are simply contingency plans. In today’s feminine-primary social order, where women are encouraged ‘never to settle for less than they deserve‘, we see generations of women experiencing the consequences of this Alpha widowhood. In fact, we go to great efforts societally to placate to it, to lessen the impact of it, and to plan contingencies for it.

But where does that leave us?

One reason I detailed the War Brides dynamic in my earliest writing was because I’d had so many men ask me this question; ‘Why is it that women can so easily move on after a breakup? We were together for years and it’s like she never even knew me now!‘ The ugly, visceral truth of this is that women are far less convicted to feel remorse, guilt or shame over abandoning (Beta) men who didn’t meet their Hypergamous ideal. We all know the stories of the ‘ride or die‘ girl who would literally do anything for her man. I once had a reader link me a story about a woman who stole a police car whose arrested boyfriend was handcuffed in the back seat. There are definitely women who will help their man bury the bodies. However, that man almost universally is that woman’s Hypergamous, Alpha ideal. And this is where the power of Hypergamy comes into the equation.

Women’s prime reproductive imperative is consolidating in the long term on a man who best embodies her Hypergamous ideal. Even now I’m not sure readers really understand the influence Hypergamy has over women. Even factoring in the War Brides dynamic, there will always be women who will literally kill for a man who best exemplifies what she believes is (or was) the best she could ever do Hypergamously.

I covered some of this in SMV Ratios & Attachment. Hypergamy influences women’s concept of love, so much so that it forms the basis of who they will allow themselves to feel ‘love’ for when it comes to reproductive opportunities. If a man embodies this Alpha ideal no substitute will replace him, unless another man exceeds the previous man’s Alpha impact.

So, how does this modify the War Brides dynamic? Hypergamous imperatives can supersede the War Brides phenomenon in that it incentivizes women to mate guard and even kill a rival to preserve a long term reproductive opportunity with an idealized Alpha man. We can add layers of social and moral doctrines to this (marriage, tribe, religion), but it’s all really embellishments or a cover story for what’s really a biological phenomenon.

Women who monogamously pair with Beta men are far less motivated to feel remorse over that man’s death or replacement by a more Alpha rival. This is where the War Brides dynamic comes in full. Hypergamy never seeks its own level and if a woman’s lesser man is defeated by more Alpha rival this only gives her a better excuse for pivoting into that superior man’s Frame. That may seem duplicitous and self-serving, but this is the ugly, visceral truth, remember? The inverse of this is that Hypergamy dictates that women will only become Alpha Widows for worthy (Alpha) men – and sometimes even the fantasy of that ideal man is enough to replace a lesser man.

So, it follows that the degree to which a woman becomes an Alpha Widow or more easily adopts a War Brides mentality is directly related to what her perception of her former partners was. Regret, remorse and jealousy are reserved for what a woman’s hindbrain believes is her ideal reproductive opportunity. In light of this I’ll have to add some caveats to both the Alpha Widow and War Bride dynamics. Neither are mutually exclusive of the other, and both depend on a woman’s perception of the man (men) involved.

In case you were wondering about the title image here: Dutch and French women who slept with German soldiers during World War II publicly had their heads shaved to shame them for their natural Hypergamous impulses. This is an example of the survival-level conflict between Hypergamy and tribal affiliation.

The Myth of the Alpha Female

On last Saturday’s Red Man Group we took a call from a woman who has apparently just discovered the “red pill school of thought” and looked up what ever convoluted definitions she could find from the ‘normie web’ to better understand it. For context, the whole exchange began around the 2:04:00 mark here, but the bit I want to dissect I’ve cued up to 2:09 in the above video. The Red Pill as a praxeology is often something most uninitiated people don’t have the patience to really want to understand. So when they’re confronted with a Red Pill truth that conflicts with some ego-invested belief they often just resort to what I call “point and sputter” – they spit out some school yard taunt, tell you how unbelievable it is anyone could ever believe such a thing in this day and then move along to whatever ideological site they’re comforted by.

Credit where it’s due, this woman (and I apologize for not getting her name) at the very least was prompted to ask some questions about how we come to whatever misattributed ideas she read were what it is we think. Listen to the whole exchange for context. In the beginning I was asked the standard “what do you tel your daughter about all of this?” as if this is going to somehow shame me back down to earth, but the part she was most distraught over was the idea that “women are only valuable for what they look like”.

My response to her was based on an essay I wrote 4 years ago titled Separating Values. In that piece I tried to outline how women today have trouble separating their sexual market value from their self-perceived personal worth:

Conflating Values

One of the major problems women have, and more than even some red pill men have, is the conflation of sexual market value with their intrinsic personal value as a human being.

It needs to be emphasized that while personal value is influential in sexual market value, SMV is distinct from your value as a human being. I’m stressing this because, in the age Disney Princess empowerment, this conflation of the two has become a go-to social convention; and not just for women.

What [Robin] Korth suffers from is presuming her personal value is her sexual market value.

It’s disruptive to her self-perceptions and ego-investments when that presumption is challenged by a man who doesn’t want to fuck her for reasons based on the intrinsic value she believes she’s entitled to by virtue of maturity and imaginings of self-sufficiency. Just as women aren’t aroused by men’s own self-concepts of virtuousness and aspirations of higher purpose, men aren’t aroused by whatever ephemeral self-perceptions a woman may have.

Listening to this woman’s concerns, it’s a fairly common refutation and one we come to expect from a mindset that presumes men callously objectify women out of hand, or due to their being taught to be so by a chauvinistic toxic masculinity. Women cling to this because it sounds right and reinforces the victimhood narrative that defines the collective identity of the Sisterhood. So when they read it or see it openly embraced, or spoken about men in a positive context it’s confirmation of an offense they want to believe is endemic in men. Thus, we get the “literally shaking”, sound of a quavering voice.

However, all of this gets in the way of women really understanding that they’ve been conditioned to conflate their personal worth with their sexual market value. As I mentioned in my response, a woman can be a wonderful humanitarian, a great mother, the CEO of a Fortune 500 company or someone who adds value to the depth and breadth of humankind, but it won’t make her look any better in a bikini. And that is where sexual market value starts for women when it comes to men’s arousal and attraction. For as long as I’ve been writing this blog I’ve tried to explain this in as simple a way as possible; men and women are different. Part of our differences is that what constitutes sexual market value for one sex is not an equal evaluation for the other. For as much as the equalist mindset pervades our social consciousness, the reality is men and women are different in many fundamental ways.

One reason Red Pill awareness in men gets vilified by women is because it nakedly exposes, discusses and develops sexual and life strategies around some very Darwinistic and unflattering realities of intersexual dynamics based on those differences. But exposing these differences is only offensive to this social order because there is a presumption of a blank-slate equalism that’s been embedded into every aspect of our gender understanding for almost 70 years now. This offensiveness is less about the actual nuts and bolts of evolution, biology and psychological differences between men and women, but more so it’s about the ego-invested idea that men and women should be blank-slate, functional equals in all respects. Even this presumption is a horse-shit cover story for the latent purpose of feminism floating the lie of “equality” – fundamentally disempowering men so women can aspire to be their masters in various ways.

The woman from our discussion expressed this barely containable angst that men only value her as a sexual object, and it’s important to suss out the reasoning for this confusion and rage. As I mentioned, the problem women have is an inability to separate their sexual market value from their personal value a ‘basic human being‘. A quote I’m known for is “virtue is anti-seductive.” No guy ‘virtues’ a woman into bed, and while I get push back for devaluing the importance of virtue occasionally, what I don’t get is any disagreement from men or women on that point. Virtue, intelligence, honor, duty, wisdom and any number of other esoteric features that would make a man a terrific human being do nothing (or sometimes work against him) for his raw visceral sexuality that women are aroused by. For men, however, these traits and many more will definitely add to his attractiveness as a long term prospect for women.

In men, affluence, status, intelligence, improvisation, creativity, ambition, drive, perseverance, humor, positive-conventional masculinity, and many more aspects make this man an attractive choice for a long term relationship with women. These are attributes that contribute to a man’s sexual market value, but they are incomplete without a raw, visceral physical component. Hypergamy serves two masters, Alpha seed and Beta need – and as such it hates the one and loves the other depending on what a woman’s most pressing necessity happens to be at that point in her life. Women have an innate, limbic understanding of what makes a man a complete package – a great catch.

Where this and most other women fail is that their own Fempowerment conditioning teaches them that what makes a man attractive, what makes his SMV appealing to women must necessarily be what makes for her own personal value and sexual market value. The reason this woman is shaking here is because this conditioning has convinced her and generations of women to build a life predicated on a fallacy: What makes her a “good person” should necessarily make her attractive and arousing to men. This is a great falsehood that is the root of many of the gender conflicts and misunderstandings we see around us today.

Gendered Differences in Attraction

The things that make a woman’s sexual market value high are not the same things make her sense of personal worth high. Yet, this is exactly what the Feminine Imperative conditions women to believe and seeks to shame men for not complying with this fallacy. When men opt for younger, hotter, tighter at all ages of their own maturity, the visceral message is clear – it makes no difference what a woman’s personal value is when it comes to sexual valuation. Where women fall short is they presume that men cannot appreciate women for anything but their sexual value.

This is an interesting dynamic since the Imperative teaches women never to implicitly do anything for a man.

The prime directive of feminism for the past 50 years has been founded on women striving to achieve the ideal of the Strong Independent Woman® (SIW). This SIW ideal is the carrot that gets the mules to pull the cart. That ideal is never fully attainable because if it were it would make an end state for feminism a realizable goal rather than the self-perpetuating social mechanism it is. The SIW ideal is intentionally ambiguous, but the concept is based on selling women the idea that they can not only “have it all” but they can be it all too. The ‘independence’ feminism sells predicated on being a self-sustaining, self-satisfying, autonomous ‘thing’ that doesn’t need for anything. A woman is every bit as good a feminine role model as she is a masculine one, ergo, she has no need for men beyond the physical aspect. In fact, an independence from men, from any form of dependency on men, has been part of the feminist charter since Seneca Falls in 1848.

From a Red Pill perspective, and in my opinion, this independence from men has been the single most damaging aspect of feminism in its history. Men and women evolved to be complements to the other and in evolutionary terms are far stronger together than apart. Each compensates for the one’s innate weaknesses with the other’s innate strengths. Feminism preaches two lies in this respect – the first being that a woman can “have it all”, but also she can be an autonomous being with no intrinsic needs beyond what she can provide for or address herself. The lie is that she “don’t need no man” when a hundred thousand years of evolution says different. Men and women need each other, but it’s feminism that’s selling the lie that they don’t.

The ironic part about this socialized lie is that in emancipating women from the ‘dependency’ of men feminism has founded the basis of ‘having it all’ on how closely a woman can emulate a man. The definition of a successful Strong Independent Woman is how closely she can replicate the success of men. This ideal for SIW success is based on a masculine ideal. As feminism has refocused women’s goals on these masculine ideals it has systematically altered the definition of femininity to align with its ideal of ‘success’.

The Myth of the Alpha Female

As part of that new masculine ideal of female success, along came the concept of the Alpha Female. I’ve read dozens of articles about this fantasy creature; how she’s a boss who takes no shit and turns companies around from the brink of bankruptcy by virtue of being female. A woman of the future who emulates and exceeds the successes of any apex-male CEO of those sexist Fortune 500 companies. Even if she’s not a high powered exec, the match (literally) of any man, women still love to imagine themselves in this “alpha” role in their own little worlds.

“I’m an Alpha Female, and maybe I’m not a jet setter, but I’m a Type A personality and as such I’m headstrong, a go-getter woman who knows what she wants.”

This sloganized mental model is part of the new Strong Independent Woman® costume that feminism is selling to women today.

If you’re a woman who’s bought into the Confidence Porn narrative that’s so popular today, allow me to ruin that image for you. There is no such thing as an “alpha” female – at least not in the respect of the idealistic Fempowered fantasy you think applies to you. The Feminine Imperative likes to convince women that they are ‘Alpha’ using that same masculine model definitions I detailed above here. The Strong Independent Woman meme only holds up insofar as it emulates masculine success and a masculine defined concept of ‘Alpha’. By this definition every woman has a potential to be an ‘alpha’ female in her own little way. Like I said, the Confidence Porn women gobble up is so tasty because it’s so achievable – all you have to do is cop the “I’m the boss, I’m a Type A person” attitude, put some foam inserts in the shoulders of your ‘power suit’ and you too can be Alpha because you say so and you walk the same walk as an Alpha Male.

The push for female-primacy has conditioned generations of women to expect an entitled, default respect, and a deference to their authority from men. They’re told at every opportunity from the time they’re 5 years old that they can do anything, have it all, be it all, and they’re the “natural leaders of the future”. By extension this leads women to the Alpha Female trope.

Ironically, the same people who love to ridicule the idea of ‘Alpha Males’ completely accept the concept of an Alpha Female. They’ll make funny videos ridiculing the Red Pill for using ‘alpha’ as a referential term – “These jokers think they’re wolves or Silver Back Gorillas, hur hur!” – but they’ll eagerly embrace the idea of an ‘alpha’ female. That conditioned deference of the feminine makes it believable; and they like the idea that identifying with women’s delusions of empowerment might get them laid.

Attribution Bias Error

The error that women and feminism make in the ‘Alpha Female’ respect is an attribution bias error. Women are conditioned to believe that if they value the aspects of what makes men attractive, what makes them a good pairing, that men must also value those traits in women. If status, power, social proof, affluence, careerism, drive, etc. is what gets them hot for men (in the long term) then possessing those traits themselves must also be attractive in the reverse. Unfortunately for women, they’re painfully (but slowly) learning that men and women are in fact different and the lie of egalitarian equalism has essentially cost them a future with a husband, children and family living.

In order to counter this harsh reality an industry in biotech egg-freezing has sprung up around the very real female insecurity that these confident Alpha Women wont find a suitable man to start a family with now that they are well past the Wall. Feminine-primary society is capitalizing on this fear.

But the reverse is true; men’s sexual selection criteria is far more simplistic than women’s. From an evolved, naturalist perspective men select women based on looks and sexual availability – and on a subconscious level women know this, yet they rationalize that men should be interested in their coequal professionalism, status and any number of intrinsic qualities they believe they possess. The root of this misunderstanding is once again the socialized lie of egalitarian, blank-slate equalism. Only now women expect that if they invest themselves in the same pursuits as Alpha men that this should compensate for their lack of physical appeal. If men and women are functional equals what defines male dominance should also define female dominance. Evolution says differently.

The woman on the left (Reneé Sommerfield) is the true Alpha female by the standards of evolutionary realities. The woman on the right (Sheryl Sandberg) is what our gynocentric social order would have men believe should be considered an ‘alpha’ female. This is the conflict that’s at the heart of so many manufactured crises of attraction for women and the failure of their long-term plans to have a family.

The Alpha Female is really the woman who best embodies what men’s evolved, biological imperatives determine what makes her an attractive breeding and long-term mate choice. Men’s criteria is very simple; fitness, youth, assertive sexuality, playfulness, conventional femininity and genuine desire to please him. Beyond this, submission, respect, nurturing (potential mothering qualities), a natural deference to male authority, humility, admiration and an unobligated desire to recognize that man as her complementary partner are just some of the long-term attributes that make a woman someone a man might want to invest himself in a family with.

Unfortunately all of this criteria is counter to the message ‘alpha‘ Females are taught are valuable today. They are taught that anything a woman might do for the expressed pleasure of a man is anathema to the Strong Independent Woman® meme. The presumption is that a desire to meet any of this criteria is a failure on the part of a woman who demands to be the ‘equal’ of a man. Even acknowledging the innate, complementary natures of men and women is an affront to the equalist narrative. Furthermore, any man who would base (much less express) his own decision making criteria as such is shamed via social conventions. The narrative is that he must be needy, or threatened by a “strong woman” or he must want this woman to be his Mommy substitute. All of this is a social mechanic meant to force fit that natural complementary criteria into the box of egalitarian equalism.

Value Added

I don’t write for a female readership per se. In fact, I don’t really direct my writing towards any audience, but in this instance I want to end here with a message for my female readers. Take this message to the bank: the sexes evolved to be complementary to each other, not adversarial. But that adversarial feeling you get when you read me describing some unflattering aspect of female nature is the product of your own Blue Pill conditioning that’s taught you the lie of egalitarianism-as-female-empowerment. If you truly want to ‘empower‘ yourselves set aside your self-importance, look inside yourselves and ask this question –

What is it about me that a man would find attractive from a naturalistic perspective?

What do I possess that a man would truly believe is Value Added?

That may feel a bit counterintuitive to you, but understand that the reason this introspection is alien or offensive to you is because you’ve been conditioned to believe that your masculine qualities are what men should find attractive about you. You turn this offense back on men and make it their fault for not finding your ‘alpha femaleness’ the root of their attraction to you. Is the idea of changing yourself, to add value to your package, for the pleasure of a man a source of anger for you? Why is that?

I see far too many otherwise beautiful women who destroy themselves on the lie of the ‘alpha’ female and a never ending struggle to perfect an equalist archetype in themselves. They rail on about infantile men, or bemoan that men are afraid to ask them out, or ask “Where are all the good guys nowadays?” Understand that these efforts to shame men into finding something attractive about you based on your masculine criteria for attraction will always fail; leaving you a lonely childless middle aged wreck all because you refused to accept that you need to be someone worth marrying.

Men and women are better together than they are apart. We evolved to be complements to the other. But, feminism, the Feminine Imperative and an endemic Fempowerment culture have taught you to believe “you are enough”, you are complete, you don’t need a man because you can satisfy all of your own needs. This is the most damning lie ever perpetrated on womankind – that you can be it all – and only when it’s too late do women realize that they’ve been had.

The Nature of the Game

I had a reader ask me some questions recently and in answering it gave me some food for thought.

Are we stuck in our Alpha fucks/Beta cucks categories? Should we attempt to blend the two categories into the ultimate hybrid?

Or is there nothing we can do, but attempt to use the information that you have (brilliantly) given us as a navigational tool to find our way through this world and godspeed to every fellow?

Before this I came across these Tweets from Rian Stone:

I think a lot of guys new to Red Pill awareness tend to apply qualifiers to the ideas of what is Alpha and what is Beta. In a similar respect a lot of plugged-in Blue Pill conditioned ‘Beta’ men like to make similar qualifications, but their understanding is rooted in what their conditioning has convinced them of. For the newly unplugged guy, Alpha is whatever he hadn’t been doing before with women that is now working for him once he flipped his own script. For the plugged in guy, whatever he’s been convinced of that women say they want is ‘Alpha’ to him – and usually that means whatever benefits a woman’s sexual strategy in terms of long term provisioning, parental investment and security. They just don’t realize their own utility to women in that game.

That said, I don’t disagree with Rian here. Over the course of fifteen years and three books I have made every effort to correct critics who insist that “all those Red Pill guys think Alpha men are Silverback Gorillas or Wolves.” Roissy once called this Etymology Hate:

5. Etymology Hate

Hater: Your definition of an alpha male is false. In the animal kingdom, the alpha male is leader of the pack, not a cad/badboy/jerk who pumps and dumps women.

Isn’t it just like a nerd to get hysterical over the appropriation of a narrow-sense scientific term to conveniently illustrate broader truths about men and women.

These “broader truths” are why I still use Alpha and Beta as descriptions for men and their mindsets. Critics and disingenuous haters like to think that even considering men or behavior sets as being Alpha or Beta is cause for dismissing whatever is being said. There’s a reason for this blanket disqualification which I’ll cover in a moment, but what they (willfully) misunderstand is that these classification are abstractions for bigger ideas. Alpha and Beta are placeholder terms necessary to consider more complex ideas in intersexual dynamics. For the most part, when I hear or read Blue Pill conditioned men mock the idea of Alpha men and insist that it’s a direct derivative of believing those ‘idiot Red Pill guys thinking they’re Alpha wolves or Silverback gorillas’ I know that I’m not dealing with a serious debate. More on this later.

Rian is also correct in his observation that both Red Pill aware men and critics alike tend to think of Alpha and Beta as specific archetypes of men. I’ve written almost a dozen essays about the nature of Alpha, but in each one I make an attempt to dispel the archetype of what an Alpha or a Beta man is. The Beta archetype is easy to agree on because almost no guy wants to be a “beta male”. As would be expected we tend to think of betas as the stereotypical ‘cuck’ or ‘soy boy’, or the Nümale with his fear grimace agape.

I should point out that even the guys who we would categorize as Betas don’t think they are. Very few Beta men look in the mirror and go “damn, I gotta Alpha up”. They believe that they are the vanguard of the new definition of Alpha; that they and women have evolved beyond the visceral realities of Hypergamy and Beta is the new Alpha. Recently there’s been a concerted social effort to redefine what is acceptable masculinity in the wake of the narrative shift that would have us accept that all masculinity is toxic.

For men there will always be a want to believe that whatever qualities make up their own personality and their own lifestyle is what should define what is “alpha”. From Alpha:

Guy’s like Corey [Worthington] infuriate men who have invested their self-worth in the accomplishments of what they think ought to be universally appreciated and rewarded. So when they’re confronted with a natural Alpha being undeservedly rewarded for brazenly acting out of accord with what they think the rules ought to be, they seethe with resentment. The natural response in the face of such an inconsistency is to redefine the term ‘Alpha’ to cater to themselves and their accomplishments as “real men” and exclude the perpetrator. The conflict then comes from seeing his new definition of Alpha not being rewarded or even appreciated as well as a natural Alpha attitude and the cycle continues. Your respect (or anyone else’s) for an Alpha has nothing to do with whether or not he possess an Alpha mindset. 3 failed marriages and 100+ lays has nothing to do with his having or not having an Alpha mindset.

In the same way that a Blue Pill conditioned “beta male” believes he best represents the new “alpha” definition, so to do a lot of Red Pill aware men who play the same game of applying their own traits to what should be considered or appreciated as “alpha”. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Trad-Con circles – an Alpha is a guy who takes care of his family and is respected as the head of the home. He takes care of his duties to family, God and country, etc., etc. Really all this is is another grab at affirmation of personal worth. Blue Pill “betas” believe exactly the same self-fulfilling thing from a different set of ideological beliefs.

In the process both the plugged-in and the unplugged create convenient archetypes for the opposite of the apex they want to believe they are and what they hope will be confirmed and rewarded. Usually these are binary caricatures: the Alpha ‘Chad’ is usually whatever image of the popular high school jock that used to be their nemesis fits, while the Beta ‘doormat’ is the George McFly character whose introversion and lack of social intelligence places him at the bottom of the dominance hierarchy. Either one of these guys can be seen in a positive or negative light depending on the perspective of who’s doing the viewing. To the Nümale, whatever that classic Beta does should be what’s appreciated as ‘alpha’ and to the Trad-Con an Alpha is the guy who dominates, but only insofar as he sticks to what they think is his ‘duty’.

Funny how both tend think the Alpha Playah, the self-important ‘Cad’ who women tingle for, who follows his own sexual strategy shouldn’t be considered ‘Alpha’ in spite of women consistently, predictably rewarding him with sex and genuine desire.  Rian nailed this part; Alpha makes her wet, Beta makes her secure. Our Instinctual interpretive process understands the visceral reasons why women get worked up for that physically ideal guy who also completes the fantasy of the Alpha Fucks side of Hypergamy. But our Emotional and Rational processes want to recreate a reality in which what we have is what women really want. So we try to persuade and convince women to act against their own Instinctual interpretive process with respect to what they should find sexy and genuinely desirable – us, just as we are. We want to change the Game to fit our capacity, our skill, our genetics, to excel in it.

Beta men don’t just hope that women will perceive their own redefinitions of ‘alpha’ as the accepted ideal, they build lives and systems of belief around convincing others and themselves that we’ve evolved past the visceral realities of what arouses women. Trad-Con men, even Red Pill aware men, do something similar – they hope that their own definition of what should constitute Alpha, and best describes themselves, will likewise supersede the natural evolved impulse of what a woman’s hindbrain perceives as an ideal Hypergamous opportunity.

Alpha Seed, Beta Need

T-rex doesn’t want to be fed; he wants to hunt. You can’t just suppress sixty-five million years of gut instinct. – Dr. Grant, Jurassic Park

Hypergamy wants what Hypergamy wants, but it’s also important to remember that Hypergamy has two sides; Alpha Seed and Beta Need. When we look at the dynamic of Ovulatory Shift we see this play out. In a woman’s proliferative phase of her menstrual cycle she is predisposed to seek out sexual opportunities with high SMV, masculinized, dominant (to the point of arrogance) men. In her luteal phase she seeks comfort, rapport, security and protection qualities in men. Alpha Seed, Beta Need. As Rian pointed out, we’ve made archetypes (and caricatures) of the type of guy who embodies these needs, but we do so to persuade a woman’s evolved Instinctive understanding of what they are. Women’s hindbrains want to hunt for Hypergamous opportunity, men’s rational (and emotional) process wants to ‘feed’ Hypergamy by redefining what that Instinct should want.

Where both Nümales, Trad-Cons and more than a few Red Pill aware men get it wrong is believing that the security Beta represents should also be what gets her wet. We live in a day and age where men are so feminized that 80%+ default to ‘beta’ behaviors and mindsets because they believe it’s what arouses women. I’ve also written many essays about how anxiety, urgency and (sexual) tension are necessary factors in the ‘enthusiastic’ sex women have with men they genuinely desire. When it comes to comforting a woman, rapport, honesty, emotional investment and security the Beta men of today have been acculturated to have it all in spades. Where they fall short is the Alpha capacity to generate tingles based on making women uncomfortable. One reason men have a tough time with Red Pill awareness is because it all seems so counterintuitive to everything they’ve ever been conditioned to believe about women and sex and how to initiate it.

If you read Roissy’s old categories of Beta to Alpha it follows a predictable pattern. The same applies to Vox Day’s socio-sexual hierarchies (Omega, Gamma, Sigma, Delta, Beta, Alpha, etc), but what we’re really defining in these ranking is a male dominance hierarchy as it applies to women’s sexual selection process – Alpha seed, Beta need – and according to any individual woman’s capacity to demand any particular rank of man.

To answer the first question I began with here, I don’t think the “categories” ever really end because dominance hierarchies are something innate to our world. So, rather than think we can change this, change the nature of reality as equalism attempts to, I think men ought to learn to play it better. The nature of the game doesn’t change. In fact, the equalist mindset that wants to change it ends up making those who accept it and play it well appear that much more exceptional. 

Why? Because the game doesn’t change and our hindbrains know this. So when we see a man who is a “good player” of the game we evolved to play, who became so in spite of all the foolish efforts to change the game to better fit those who don’t play it well, our instincts are attracted to that person that much more. In other words the guy who Just Gets It is even more attractive in a world that women’s hindbrains know is trying to convince her that he shouldn’t just get it. This is why even the most staunch, egalitarian equalist feminist of women still adore a conventionally masculine man who looks and plays the natural role of Alpha man well. They still want to bang him, they still want to submit to him in spite of their ego investments. And they’ll coyly, shamefully, but without any self-consciousness admit they love being loved, fucked, protected, secured, etc. by that guy.

As an adaptation to increase the likelihood of reproduction men and women seek to change the Game that we’ve been playing for 100,000 years now. Only in our age of “gender enlightenment” are we so deluded as to think that prioritizing our emotion or reason above the realities our evolved instinct is spelling out for us might be a way to get intimate and reproduce. Women want to change men’s evolved sexual natures – via social constructionism, feminism, feminine-primacy – in order to reproduce with men they would naturally never have a chance breeding or pairing with, and without any burden of their own performance or merit. They want to change the Game to suit their deficits in playing it the way it is.

Similarly, men seek to improve their own reproductive success by also redefining the terms of the Game to also breed and pair (mostly breed) with women that their own Burden of Performance would merit them. This is why transvaluation (vulnerability is strength, etc.) features so prominently in this mindset. It is an effort in achieving reproductive success and intimacy without excelling in a man’s performance burden. This is precisely why Blue Pill men insist on defining Alpha and Beta in as literal a sense as possible. By rejecting and mocking these terms it self-reinforces the misbelief that they, and ‘quality’ women, have evolved beyond the visceral aspects of Hypergamy. By denying the realities of Alpha and Beta aspects in men the belief is it sets them apart from any natural dominance hierarchy. They’re “above all that”, “women (at least the ‘quality’ ones) are rational agents too and above their own Hypergamous impulses” and “people are all unique individuals set apart from all that human nature stuff.” Each of these rationales is linked to a core misbelief in blank-slate equalism (I’ll address in another essay), but they are also representative of an effort to remove these men from a natural dominance hierarchy and place them into a new Game they believe women are also playing and in which they, by default, are at the highest degree by virtue of having progressed beyond the old Game.

 

Blue Pill Alphas

beta-white-knight-101_o_5320043

A comment from Softek gets us started today:

My friend was telling me the other night how seeing multiple women “isn’t worth it.”

I’ve heard that more than once from more than one of my friends.

And how “living with the guilt and shame” and “hating themselves” was destroying their lives….

Very hard schema to break out of when it’s been imprinted on you. My own father self-proclaims to be “in favor of the damsels in distress,” including his recent, unquestionable defense of my friend’s mom, who divorced his dad after 35 years of marriage.

My dad didn’t even question her motives for a second and after she spent the evening hanging out with my mom and him, and told them the supposed “real” reasons she got a divorce, my dad automatically cut contact with the guy and again proclaimed his belief that men should protect all “damsels in distress.”

He’s even taken shots at me when my girlfriend’s been over, clearly siding with her and telling her things like “Keep him in line” and “Straighten him out” and calling me an idiot and scolding me if I don’t pull her chair out for her or put her coat on for her when she stands up.

No doubt, my self sabotaging of a clear opening for a hookup with an HB8 23 year old has been influenced by all of this. I didn’t realize how Beta I was until I actually got into a relationship.

I didn’t even know I HAD these programs because I was incel before, and had a couple one night stands that never developed into anything more. I also didn’t even know my DAD had these programs until he started doing shit like actually scolding me in front of my girlfriend and instructing her to “train me” and things like that.

To be honest I was kind of in shock that my own father would think like that. It felt like he was turning on me and it pissed me off. Even in a small way, to let his Blue Pill conditioning get in the way of his relationship with his own son — that really got to me, and not in a good way. I felt like my dad is supposed to be on my side, and to see him treating her better than he treats me and having conversations with her and helping her work out her finances and giving her career advice and all that while he won’t even give me the time of day….

….simply, it’s eye-opening. It’s tough to truly go Red Pill when everyone around you, including your own father/family members/friends are Blue Pill, and especially when they’re an active, regular part of your life, not just a figment of your imagination.

But there is no other way.

Alpha is a mindset, not a demographic. Softek’s father’s reflexive responses are endemic of men who are Alpha White Knights. Their reactions are behaviorally Alpha, but their reasoning is founded in their investments in Blue Pill conditioning. The usual schema revolve around an attempt to display higher value by identifying with and qualifying for women whom they presuppose have default authority and correctness above men in general.

This then manifests as an exaggerated AMOGing of any guy who would not affirm his investments in that Blue Pill ego-investment. So you get a guy who blusters like Softek’s Dad at Red Pill awareness – it’s both an opportunity to prove value as a White Knight and a resistance against any truths that would challenge his Blue Pill ego.

In my own life I’ve known several men who anyone in the ‘sphere would objectively call Alpha. Their default is to action, dominance, authority and control of whatever life puts in front of them. They handle their shit, they own their business ventures, they have all the Dark Triad traits you might expect from a guy like this – but put them in a social setting with a girl and they go as Beta as any Blue Pill guy you’ll ever know. Their Blue Pill conditioning predisposes them to compartmentalize this aspect of their personality to effectively put their dominant personality to the use of the Feminine Imperative.

Dangerous White Knights

Maybe I’m the only guy who watched both seasons of Daredevil on Netflix, but if you watch the first season where they go into the origin and character of Wilson Fisk (Kingpin) this is exactly the type of guy I’m talking about. Wildly Alpha, wildly unstable, but still in control of his empire. Put a woman in his life and he transitions all of that Alpha energy to essentially worshiping that woman. In fact, this prioritizing of women above his own interests is the motivation for his empire building. These are the Alpha White Knights who channel that Alpha energy to making his Blue Pill idealisms a reality for any woman who fits his ideal.

And when that Blue Pill ideal reveals itself to be a fantasy – or God forbid, a Red Pill aware guy should take this fantasy away from him intentionally or not – you will see him self destruct, and likely take either that woman, that Red Pill guy, or both along with him.

That’s one type of Blue Pill Alpha. Another is the guy who is Alpha in one context, but Beta in another. These are the guys I describe when I talk about my military friends who’ve faced live ammo being fired at them by people intent on killing them who hold up like nails and get their job done while commanding other men. Put them in a domestic situation or a position where they have to fall back on their Blue Pill conditioning in dealing with women and they’ll defer automatically to the Frame of their wives without a thought. When their wives up and leave them, these are some of the first men to swallow a bullet by their own hand.

Again, this is an Alpha who’s never been awakened to his Blue Pill conditioning. Say even one marginally critical word about women in general and they’re the first in line to kick your ass. But they’re also the most likely to self destruct when their Blue Pill idealism is challenged or crushed.

A lot gets made about the status of ‘Paper Alphas’, but I’m beginning to think term is a bit in error. I’m dropping this here today because I think there’s a misunderstanding about how Alpha energy is channeled with respect to a guy being Red Pill aware, and a guy who is still plugged into the feminine-primary Matrix and at the mercy of how women (and other men) will exploit his Blue Pill ego-investments. In the manosphere we tend to conflate Alpha with Red Pill, but as I always say, Alpha is a mindset and not representative of whether that man is in fact ‘woke’ to his conditions and manipulations.

When I watched how the Marvel writers handled the character of Wilson Fisk I got chills because I have personally counseled Blue Pill, but predominantly Alpha, guys who’ve stabbed the new boyfriends of their ex-girlfriends because he was perceived as the catalyst to the destruction of his Blue Pill ideal – union with his ONEitis girlfriend.

I’m emphasizing this because I think it’s important for Red Pill aware men to understand the dangers of being perceived as the antithesis of these men’s ego-investments in Blue Pill idealism. This may take the form of him just despising you for revealing uncomfortable truths to him with your own presence and lifestyle, or it may be him pinning his failures to consolidate his Blue Pill ideals to you and wanting to eliminate both you and the truth you represent.

I’m sorry if this is a bit sobering, but it needs to be said. As most readers know, I consider Alpha and Beta abstract terms; they are placeholders for concepts, thus, it is entirely possible for a largely Alpha man to be thoroughly invested in his Blue Pill conditioning. Likewise, it is also possible for more Beta men to be some of the most Red Pill aware men you’re likely to meet. It’s when a Beta man is ego-invested in the Blue Pill that he’s most to be pitied, while a Red Pill aware Alpha is likely to be the most celebrated. But that’s not to say the Red Pill and Alpha, or the Blue Pill and Beta are mutually exclusive concepts.

Is Provisioning Inherently a Characteristic of a Beta Mindset?

In this week’s post the proposition came up that any provisioning was inherently a Beta trait. I’ve read this before and not just on my blog, but also coming from both the MGTOW and the PUA sides of the fence. The idea is that any form of monogamy and/or provisioning for an LTR girlfriend (and I would count a live-in arrangement as provisioning), a wife and any kids (prospectively) is itself evidence of a Beta mindset.

I think the problem with this presumption rests in defining what the act of provisioning means both an Alpha and a Beta mindset. For both, this depends on their approach to their primary sexual strategies and reconciling it with the eventual necessity of his own parental investment in raising children, and/or maintaining relational Frame (or not) within a monogamy that at least promotes the wellbeing of any children.

As a reference here, I’m going to link Myth of the Good Guy to give a bit of perspective in this.

While it’s true that lower SMV men generally, necessarily, opt for a sexual strategy of primary investment in one mate (via provisioning) and higher SMV men can afford a sexual strategy of lower investment while seeking more sexual opportunities, those strategies are not necessarily reflective of each man’s mindset. As I mentioned in the beginning here, it is entirely possible for a subjectively Alpha man to subscribe to a Blue Pill conditioned mindset and vice versa for Beta men becoming Red Pill aware.

So yes, provisioning can be Beta if that provisioning (and what it took to achieve it) is the result of an effort to secure the sustained sexual interests of a single woman, as motivated by his perceived necessity to invest himself as I mentioned above for a low SMV man. However, if you have a high SMV guy who’s provisioning capacity is the byproduct of his Alpha mindset (or nature if you prefer) and not the result of his sexual strategy to build it to invest in any single woman, is that guy’s provisioning inherently a Beta characteristic?

We’ve had an interesting discussion about this in the last comment thread, and In the interests of full disclosure here, I’m still on the fence about this concept. I’ll have a forthcoming post about mindset soon.

Provisioning is certainly a value added aspect to a guy who a woman sees as an Alpha sex prospect already, and not a necessary a prerequisite for fucking him, but it’s not a disadvantage (being Beta) if that Alpha guy also has means, affluence, status, looks, etc. That said, and I’ve related this before, some of the most memorable sex experiences I’ve ever had were when I was an unemployed semi-pro musician in the late 80s-early 90s with almost zero means, but was somehow able to bang over 40 women then.

Provisioning is not a prerequisite for any man with Game, but is it inherently Beta? Possibly, when a guy has the Blue Pill mindset that makes him believe in the Relational Equity fallacy and he subscribes to the Blue Pill conditioned idea that he’s inherently lower SMV than ANY woman (like Softek’s Dad), thus he must improve his odds of successfully breeding by being a “good provider”. And as I, and anyone in the manosphere, will relate this old books providerhood is fast becoming an obsolete sexual strategy for Beta men.

This is, I think, the hesitation that most guys wanting to avoid the stink of ‘Beta Provider’ will argue for. But is a nominally Alpha guy, who has excess means and resources being “Beta” by providing for his wife & family? If that man’s dominant personality is ‘Alpha’ does this predispose women (or his wife) to rationalize his provisioning as an Alpha trait, or is it just an endearing (positive), comforting Beta trait / behavior that solidifies her attraction (if not arousal) to him?

I don’t think that the act of provisioning itself is inherently Beta or Alpha, rather it’s the mindset and status of that guy that makes it so. What do we call a an Alpha with ample means who refuses to adequately provide for his wife and/or kids? What do we call a Beta who’s based his life and marriage on his capacity to provide once he’s lost his job? Why do women statistically look down on men who don’t provide in equal or greater measure to their own contributions? Despite all the equalist boilerplate beliefs to the contrary, why do women feel little or no attraction to a non-provisioning house-husband? If provisioning were a net Beta trait why is its absence a source of decreased attraction for men?

I should also add that this perception of whether a man is Alpha or Beta in his provisioning is subjective to whatever phase of maturity a woman find herself in, and is modified by her own necessitousness – which, as has been argued in the ‘sphere ad infinitum, has become increasingly less dependent on men. It’s no coincidence that back in the early 90s for me, the women I was banging were largely girls in their SMV peak years (21-24) or they we’re the occasional cougars of the time who were already divorced and still reasonably attractive enough to pass the boner test for me. My capacity to provision for either of these demographic of women made little difference to my sex appeal, but for different reasons.

Roissy even covers this aspect of women’s sexual prioritization in The Difficulty of Gaming Women by Age Bracket:

31 to 34 year olds

In some ways, women in the 31-34 age range are the toughest broads to game. (By “toughest”, it is meant “most time consuming”.) It’s counterintuitive, yes, but there are factors at work besides her declining beauty which mitigate against the easy, quick lay. For one, it is obviously harder to meet single 31-34 year old women than it is to meet single younger women. Marriage is still a pussy-limiting force to contend with for the inveterate womanizer, but Chateau apprentices are hard at work battling the scourge of mating market disturbances caused by the grinding and churning of the marriage machine.

But the bigger reason 31-34 year olds are harder to game than any other age group of women has to do with the wicked nexus of entitlement and self-preservation that occurs at this age in women. When you combine a disproportionate sense of entitlement fueled by years of feminism, steady paychecks and promotions, and cheerleading gay boyfriends with suspicions of every man’s motives and a terrible anxiety of being used for a sexual fling sans marriage proposal, you get a venom-spitting malevolent demoness on guard against anything she might perceive as less than total subjugation to her craving for incessant flattery and princess pedestaling.

Note that Chateau guests aren’t necessarily complaining. A harder-to-game 33 year old is kind of like getting bumped down from a Honda Civic rental but driving off the lot with the consolation prize of a Ferrari.

Listen to any man who is good with women and they will tell you the same thing:

“I have an easier time bedding and dating 23 year olds than I do 33 year olds.”

While I do concur with the assessment about women’s exaggerated sense of entitlement, I would also argue that this difficulty is a result of women’s prioritizing long-term security (emotional and provisional) as part of their sexual strategy reprioritizations that come in the wake of their Epiphany Phase. Ergo, this would explain the ease in gaming women pre and post Epiphany Phase. Provisioning and long term security are low sexual priorities for these demographics of women.

But does that make a capacity for provisioning inherently a Beta trait? I think it’s easy to misconstrue that capacity as Beta, because provisioning is a high-value attribute that is expected from Beta men according to their own sexual strategy. Provisioning is associated with Betas because it is integral to their sexual strategy, and also part of the Blue Pill plan for which women are hoping to fulfill at a point in their maturity when they are subjectively at their most necessitous.

What do you think?

The Art of AMOG

If you know the enemy and know yourself you need not fear the results of a hundred battles.

One of the more contentious aspects of intersexual competition the early PUAs hit upon was the phenomenon of the AMOG – Alpha Male Of Group – and how ‘that guy’s’ apparent social dominance focused all interaction within a peer group on himself. The AMOG was an easy parody of a guy to hate on for early Game practitioners because his archetype was so relatable for men looking to improve their chances with women they’d never been able to consider before they discovered Game. The nefarious AMOG was their worst cock-blocking villain.

For a recovering Beta experimenting with Game for the first time it was bad enough that the very real, in-his-face proposition of rejection by women was always to be considered, but to have to account for a guy that looked (in his mind) like the typical jock who regularly out-Alpha’d him back in high school seems like an unfair obstacle to need to overcome. I think that a lot of men’s competition anxiety focuses on a very overdramatized caricature of the Alpha ‘bullies’ they were familiar with when growing up.

This characterization is also the basis of the long-clichéd plot of every boy-meets-girl, boy-overcomes-shyness, boy-overcomes-bully-to-get-the-girl story ever told, and not just by Hollywood.

While female written romance stories revolve around multiple suitors for a woman protagonist to tame the most Alpha among them – usually ending with the one who’s a misunderstood asshole to everyone but her – male written romance generally centers on an underperforming Beta male (with a heart of gold) who, through extraordinary circumstance is placed in a position of  outperforming all of his previous rivals for his dream girl, or the girl he ‘should really be with’ instead of the shallow girl he thought would be so great. Instead of selfishly abusing his newfound Alpha powers by kicking sand in the faces of lesser Betas, he fashions himself as the hero exemplar of how Betas should act if they find themselves in a similar empowerment.

The stories of Spider Man, Captain America and even Back to the Future follow these male-romance scripts to the letter, but in every case the Beta-with-a-chance has to teach the bully a lesson before he can qualify for the girl’s attention, much less her intimacy. This clichéd story arch is a manifestation of men’s internalized understanding of their burden of performance. And while I can’t entirely assert this is an intrinsic part of men’s own mental firmware, I have to speculate that the fantasy of fulfilling it is part of men’s ubiquitous need to adequately perform for women’s intimate approval.

Regardless, the objective purpose is still to ‘get the girl’.

Examples of this Alpha bully archetype are part of most men’s formative learning. Not all men learn the lesson of the bully (some play the role with relish), but if we hold to the 80/20 rule of the manosphere we’re statistically looking at around 80% of (Beta) men who do. From grade school to high school to college, that guy, the douchebag, the guy who can’t help but actively or passively draw attention to himself, becomes the AMOG – and damned if he’s not the most contemptible bastard (or type of bastard) you know.

I’m highlighting that guy because more often than not he’s less a real person and more a manifestation of the anxiety that results from men’s insecurity about performing adequately for feminine approval. It’s easy to poke fun at the guys you see on hotchickswithdouchebags.com because they’re representations of the bully you hate. They’re the Jerks that every woman loves and every ‘normal’ guy vainly tries to make women rationally understand are the worst possible romantic option for them.

One very difficult hurdle men have in unplugging is getting past what they believe is the emulation of the Alpha Jerk who so regularly outperformed them, if not bullied them – yet, his asshole ways were still undeniably effective with the women he wanted to get with. Thus, for men who come to Red Pill awareness there’s a natural resistance to become that guy.

This AMOG archetype impression is tough to confront for men, but it’s important they do so.

This impression for men is an incredibly useful tool to effect women’s sexual strategy later in life when the woman (or type of woman) he’s held in such high regard and pined to be intimate with for so long finally “comes to her senses” around her Epiphany Phase and accepts him. For men with this AMOG mental impression, that woman’s acceptance comes with a certain degree of (sometimes smug) vindication. He waited her out and finally she’s “realized” what he’s been trying to make her see for so long – he’s actually the ‘perfect boyfriend’ for her.

He doesn’t realize he’s just playing the convenient ‘savior’-provider role women’s sexual strategy has conditioned and prepared him for, but believing his Beta Nice Guy life track has finally won out over the nefarious AMOG in his head is a strong reinforcer of a belief women need him to strongly believe when it’s time to cash in their Beta Bucks chips and her SMV starts its decline.

And therefore those skilled in war bring the enemy to the field of battle and are not brought there by him.

I’m going to flip your AMOG impression upside down now. That AMOG isn’t the one you should concern yourself with.

Most of the first PUAs always suggested a process of containment and isolating your target woman in order to ‘poach’ her from that guy. I understand the proposed isolation idea is to remove a girl you like from her social group, but the effect is really similar to Mate Guarding – isolate her awareness of all other sexual competitors and focus her on yourself. 

However, unless you’re making your approaches in clubs or loud bars it’s likely the context you’re working on a woman in isn’t one where an active, in-your-face AMOGing is happening. Isolation becomes a security measure to focus her on you being her best immediate prospect.

Roissy once stated that there are groupies for every male endeavor, I should also add that there are AMOGs in every male endeavor. Every group of nerdy programmers, geeks, chess club, your bowling team and even in your Bible study group, there’s an AMOG. Some are more significant than others, but rest assured, you know him, or you will.

Most men will compartmentalize themselves socially so as to best facilitate their chances of meeting, banging, marrying or otherwise interacting with women. This compartmentalization is really a form of Buffering against rejection, but it’s also a logical social positioning of a man putting himself into an environment where he can (hopefully) excel and be noticed for it.

All warfare is based on deception – Bear this in mind when you enter into a new social group dynamic or an unfamiliar social environment. You are an unknown commodity and therefore your strengths are novel to the group. Your weaknesses (your Beta-ness) will be more obvious than your strengths and thus more easily attached to you.

Playing to one’s strengths usually involves defining a man’s social environments. King Douchebag at a Vegas pool party is excelling in his environment, just as Bobby Fisher is at a chess tournament. One reason less ‘socially adept’ men enjoy more confidence at a ComicCon is because the environment buffers their social deficits, but emphasizes their particular talents. The first mistake most men make when considering an AMOG situation is underestimating the importance of that environment. In high school the environment was probably set for you, but as an adult you’ve got a greater degree of control over it.

Bear this in mind when you’re confronted with a guy “all the girls love”. There’s a tendency on the part of Beta leaning guys to think the AMOG is a ‘natural’ Alpha when in fact he’s really domain dependent on the social environment you share with him. Of course there will always be guys who excel in almost any environment because Hypergamy is universal to women and a ‘hawt guy’ is ‘hawt’ to all women, but remove him from his preferred domain to one you’re better adept in, or, outperform him in his domain with a particular strength or expertise you possess in such a way that he’s forced to acknowledge your skill.

To know your Enemy, you must become your Enemy.

The caricature of an in-your-face belligerent AMOG is really a social anomaly, and usually your experience of him is the product of an environment you’re not at home in. Far more common however is the AMOG who is unassuming, affable, and honestly a guy you probably can’t help but like. In fact this likability is his primary appeal. Obvious Alpha superiority combined with even a marginal humility makes for an irresistible AMOG to women.

One of my best friends to this day was a guy I despised when we were in high school. We ended up becoming lifelong friends, but initially I hated him for having such a natural Alpha affinity with the girls I wanted to get with. I actually attribute part of my early 20s sexual success (and if I’m honest some proto-Red Pill awareness) to many of the lessons women’s behavior around him taught me.

Both the nervous Beta and the PUA like to encourage the idea of an AMOG as being the drunk, loud-mouthed frat boy who pushes you aside to get to the girl at the bar you’re sarging (“Step aside McFly!”), but the Alpha Male of the Group to really consider is the guy women can’t stop talking about when he’s not even present. He’s the guy who leaves the room and girls giddily huddle together to agree about how ‘hawt’ he is. He doesn’t even have to be in the group to be the Alpha of it.

The best form of social proof is the unsolicited kind. The kind where women can’t help but talk about a guy, and ask his Beta-chump friends how they can get to know him better.

He who knows when he can fight and when he cannot, will be victorious.

In the immediate sense, unseating this AMOG would be a challenge only the most exceptional men could hope for. He’s established in his environment and his status and social proof is perpetuated for him within his social group. This situation may seem hopeless, and if your goal is to supplant him you’d have to really consider what the rewards would be in doing so, however there is much to learn from him within your shared environment.

Pose as a friend, act as a spy. Befriending the AMOG may be your best option as it opens you up to his social proof as a peer. You may not replace him in the short term, but if you’re spinning plates as you should, his confirmation of you as a peer will only benefit you. This confirmation will allow you an insight into the dynamics of that social environment. Your ultimate success doesn’t lie in destroying the AMOG, or becoming one yourself, but mastering a shared environment in which your strengths are best applied.

The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.

Pretend inferiority and encourage his arrogance. The opportunity to secure ourselves against defeat lies in our own hands, but the opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself.

This tact is useful for both the in-your-face AMOG as well as the non-direct, status affirmed AMOG. Sometimes proving one’s superiority is simply allowing the mediocre enough time and opportunity to self-destruct. The trick of course is in being prepared to swiftly capitalize on that AMOG’s missteps.

Law 33 – Discover Each Man’s Thumbscrew
Everyone has a weakness, a gap in the castle wall.  That weakness is usualy an insecurity, an uncontrollable emotion or need; it can also be a small secret pleasure.  Either way, once found, it is a thumbscrew you can turn to your advantage.

In the early part of my career in liquor branding I worked for a very rich man in his mid 60s. This guy had quite the resume of “successes”, but for the greater part they’d come from his self-importance and borrowing money than any real talent of his own. He was the owner, but had a reputation for attention seeking and a love of flattery that bordered on arrogance. Usually this would come at the expense of whomever happened to be outshining him as the master.

He was a consummate AMOG, but with no real legitimacy. At one point we had an important negotiation with a Chinese distributor to get our brands into an Asian market and as he’d typically do he wanted to entertain the reps over dinner after a big trade show we’d met them at. They were impressed with me because I was responsible for the creative side of the company, but even with my own deferential credits to my ‘boss’ he took it as an opportunity to AMOG me in front of his new ‘friends’.

I actually saw this coming (it’d happened on other occasions) and I had a good prior knowledge of the sensibilities of the Chinese from my time in doing casino marketing, so I diplomatically let him hang himself with his self-aggrandizement and bluster at my expense. Predictably the reps were off-put by this and we lost the distribution. The good news was that about a year and a half later I was offered a string of very lucrative branding contracts for several of this Asian company’s holdings (2 of which I still front now) because of this patience and letting my boss implode. And all I did was see it coming and let him convict himself.

Every AMOG has a weakness to exploit. Sometimes discovering this requires a patience most guys simply don’t want to wait around for, but with a bit of tact and attention it doesn’t take long. I think the older a man gets the easier it is to judge the character of others (or it should) – you experience the “types” enough to gauge a predictable character action.

There’s an old, but fantastic breakdown of the classic Boyfriend Destroyer script on RSD Nation. I wont repost it here, but if you take a moment to read the script, the premise is one of breaking down a boyfriend’s reputation by indirectly whittling away at the most predictable areas of contention in most relationships. Emphasize his Beta attributes while leading (not telling) her to consider and appreciate your Alpha attributes.

Yes, it’s bad form, and yes, your efforts would be better applied to new prospective plates to spin instead of working on some girl with a boyfriend. However, it is an excellent study in understanding how to deconstruct an AMOG and learning his thumbscrews.

Amused Mastery isn’t just a technique to hold women’s attention, it’s also an effective tool in defusing an AMOG. Once you have an understanding of that AMOG’s weakness – a penchant for self-aggrandizement, a taste for booze or a kind of woman, lack of legitimate ambition, Beta thinking/behavioral tendencies, etc. – the plan then becomes one of emphasizing those character flaws indirectly by exemplifying counter-strengths to those weaknesses.

Women love a man who Just Gets It, and the best, playful way of expressing that is with Amused Mastery; but it’s even more sexy when that Mastery extends to men who she perceives are your intersexual rivals. This then, by association, compliments her ego for your Amused Mastery of her.

Alpha Tells

Alpha Tells

For as long as I’ve been writing in the manosphere, the definition of “what is Alpha?” has been the number one point of contention I’ve had to state and restate the most often. I’m not going to rehash this now as I have several posts on the nature of Alpha already linked in the sidebar, so if you’re looking for my take on Alpha that’s where to find it.

However, to lead in to today’s post I need to address the basis of what I believe are the most common misunderstandings about the term Alpha.

Well before the inception of this blog, in the early beginnings of what would evolve into the manosphere there was a need of terminology to describe the more abstract concepts developing in the ‘community’. Some of these analogies and terms are still with the manosphere today, others have morphed into more useful abstractions; Alpha Widows, Hypergamy (in its true nature), the Feminine Imperative, even Red Pill awareness are all examples of established terms or analogies for understood abstractions. Among these are also the concepts of a man being Alpha and Beta.

From The Unbearable Triteness of Hating at CH:

5. Etymology Hate

Hater: Your definition of an alpha male is false. In the animal kingdom, the alpha male is leader of the pack, not a cad/badboy/jerk who pumps and dumps women.

Isn’t it just like a nerd to get hysterical over the appropriation of a narrow-sense scientific term to conveniently illustrate broader truths about men and women.

One of the most common disconnects men encounter with the Red Pill for the first time is equating the term Alpha with its usage in describing the mating habits of Lions, Wolves or Silver Back Gorillas. It’s easy to ridicule or simply dismiss a valid, but uncomfortable, Red Pill truth when you’re simplistically comfortable in defining ‘Alpha Male’  in literal etymological terms.

This is the first resistance blue pill men claim they have with the Red Pill. They have no problem understanding and using abstractions for blue pill concepts they themselves are ego-invested in, but challenge that belief-paradigm with uncomfortable red pill truths and their first resort is to obstinately define Alpha (as well as Hypergamy) in as narrow, binary and literal a sense as they can muster.

“Get in Touch with Your Feminine Beta Side”

The next most common misunderstanding comes from conflating the abstractions of Alpha and Beta with masculine and feminine traits. In this (often deliberate) misdirection, the concepts of being Alpha or Beta become synonymous with being masculine or feminine. This is the personal basis of Alpha and Beta many Purple Pill advocates (really blue pill apologists) comfortably redefine for themselves, to suit themselves.

This purple pill conflation is really just a comforting return the the curse of Jung – anima & animus – if the complete man is an even mix of Alpha and Beta, masculine and feminine, then all the worst aspects of his “betaness” can’t be all bad, and he reinterprets what really amounts to a complete androgyny as “being the best balance”.

Unfortunately, and as blue pill chumps will later attest, the feminine expects to find its paired balance in the masculine, not an equalist idealization of both in the same man. Thus women, on a limbic level, expect men to be Men.

This one of the missives of an equalitarian mindset; that an individualized, egalitarian balance of masculine and feminine aspects in two independent people should replace the natural complementary interdependence of masculine and feminine attributes in a paired balance that humans evolved into.

What purple pill temperance really equates to is a 21st century return to the 20th century feminized meme “men need to get in touch with their feminine sides”… or else risk feminine rejection. 60+ years of post sexual revolution social engineering has put the lie to what an abject failure this concept has been.

What they fail to grasp is that an Alpha mindset is not definitively associated with masculine attributes. There are plenty of high-functioning, masculine men we would characterize as Alpha based on our perception of them in many aspects of life, who nonetheless are abject supplicating Betas with regard to how they interact with, and defer to women.

Whether that disconnect is due to a learned, Beta deference to the feminine (White Knighting), some internalized fear of rejection, or just a natural predisposition to be so with women, isn’t the issue; what matters is that the abstraction of Alpha isn’t an absolute definitive association with the masculine.

Likewise, Beta attributes are neither inherently feminine. As has been discussed ad infinitum in the manosphere, 80%+ of modern men have been conditioned (or otherwise) to exemplify and promote a feminine-primary, supportive Beta role for themselves and as many other men they can convince to identify more with the feminine.

The Beta mindset isn’t so much one of adopting a feminine mindset as it is a deference to, and the support of, a feminine-primary worldview.

The reason purple pill (watered down red pill) ideology wants to make the association of Alpha = Masculine, Beta = Feminine is because the “get in touch with your feminine side” Beta attributes they possess in spades can be more easily characterized as “really” being Alpha if it helps make him the more androgynously acceptable male he mistakenly believes women are attracted to (if not directly aroused by).

Alpha Tells

From jf12:

The sexual alphaness of a male towards a female is exhibited by her wanting to please him, and the sexual betaness of a male is exhibited by him needing to please her. A man’s alphaness obviously and definitionally does not cause her to more require him to please her (i.e. alphaness does not rub off like that). And also, betaness is not transferrable, no matter how much we betas wish that our women-pleasing caused women to want to please us.

Moreover, the social dominance of a male in a male hierarchy is barely correlated with his sexual alphaness, and certainly not causal. There are far too many counterexamples, such as Bill Gates, Napoleon Bonaparte, Horatio Nelson, and the list is very very long.

However, and this is a key sociologically empirical point, the social dominance of a *female* human (the best kind!) in a *female* human hierarchy is extremely correlated, in this precise way: A woman to whom women cater to will 99.9% of the time demand to be catered to by her man. This is why women believe man-pleasing women (I admit there are some) are “lesser”. It is also why men (e.g. me) who have tended to be mated to females who are socially dominant in a female hierarchy are invariably betas. It’s simply false that female-dominant women tend to choose men who demand pleasing.

What critics of an Alpha/Beta dichotomy conveniently sweep under the conversational carpet is that the dichotomy they want to debate only exists in their convenient, personal interpretations of Alpha or Beta mean to them.

From a male perspective we can endlessly debate (from our own personal biases) what we believe constitutes an Alpha state (remember, an abstract term, stay with me here) and the expectations of which we think women should respond to according to those expectation. But it’s women’s instinctive behaviors around Alpha men (or men they contextually perceive so) that provide us with the tells as to how she perceives a man’s Alpha or Beta status.

For as much as we believe women should respond to our definition of Alpha – and despite how women will explain they agree with those self-prescribed definitions – as always, it is their behaviors when in the presence of, or in a relationship with men they perceive as being Alpha (or of higher sexual market value than themselves if you prefer) that they bely their true, instinctual recognitions of Alpha.

In a social environment where men are conditioned to believe that women are as equal, rational agents as men, the belief men put their faith into is that women will appreciate their intrinsic qualities and base their sexual selectivity upon a man’s virtue, bearing, intelligence, humor, and any number of attractive intrinsic qualities. However, the truth of what women base their sexual selectivity upon (arousal) is far more evident in their instinctual, unconditioned behavior when around Alpha men – as well as men’s instinctual sensitivity to that behavior.

There are many examples of this Alpha reactive behavior. I’ll make an attempt to illustrate a few of them here, but I expect there’ll be many more offered in the comment thread an I’ll encourage a discussion of the behaviors that serve as Alpha tells. Rossy/Heartiste has made a sport with his ongoing “spot the Alpha” series of posts in which he analyzes a picture or video of a woman’s reaction to a man who she is obviously has an Alpha interest in as her body language and subcommunications suggest. (h/t to CH for today’s image)

The common criticism of these images is that red pill men would read too much into these displays, but the underlying message in that criticism is rooted in understanding and willfully ignoring what our instinctual perceptions of them are. We know Alpha when we see it, but need an explanation to protect our own ego’s Alpha assessment of ourselves.

The Real Selection

For all the delighted ego ’empowerment’ of women boasting they are the sexual selectors in this life, there is still a nervous uncertainty about being found acceptable themselves to an Alpha lover of higher SMV status than they might otherwise merit. This is where the illusions of an assortive mating model break down for women. If feminine-primary sexual selection were the only element to mating there would be no need for the behaviors women are subject to in seeking the approval from men they perceive as Alpha.

There’s a look, an attitude and a presence women will give to Men for whom they have a natural deference to. I don’t just mean blatant sexual subcommunications like casually biting her lower lip, or the hair twirling that’s almost cliché now. It goes beyond the sexual into a kind of meta-attraction/arousal. While the sexual urgency for an Alpha is strong and manifests in a woman’s forwardness toward him, the meta-attraction is both of submission and a subconscious desire for his approval of her.

Men predisposed to a Beta mindset also display many of these same behavioral cues with the women they hope will appreciate them in the same fashion a woman does for a Man that her hindbrain instinctually knows is of a higher SMV. In Beta men we see these behaviors as evidence of “clinginess” or “neediness” and is an identifiable Beta tell; but in women this natural and unprovoked leaning in to a Man, this desire to submit for his approval, is a positive indicator of Alpha attraction.

This is why, as third party observers, we instinctually find such behavior in men distasteful; we subliminally sense a complementary imbalance between the man and woman.

When a woman makes an unforced effort to please a man with subtle words, unintentional wide-eyed contact, and body positioning / posture you’re dealing with a woman who is compelled to defer to you as Alpha.

That isn’t to say this can’t be faked. In fact strippers, good ones at least, are not just physically arousing, or more sexualized, but are in tune with the deficit most men feel when it comes to this Alpha deference. Beyond just the sexual aspect, one thing that makes strippers so enticing and seductive is that the majority of men are simply unused to the fawning affections and Alpha interest (albeit feigned) of any woman, much less an attractive one.

This is also one reason men become so prone to ONEitis both inside and outside this contrived, transactional, sort of attraction. Men are the True Romantics, they want to believe a woman’s sincerity in her Alpha deference to him.

Does the girl you’re interested in come to you, or do you go to her?

I’ve emphasized the importance of establishing and maintaining Frame for years now, but I sometimes wonder if the importance of holding Frame isn’t lost on most men.

To an equalist mindset this Frame establishment seems like I’m advocating men be domineers of their relationships and a man rely on some dark manipulative psychology to enforce his will in that relationship. That’s not what I’m suggesting for the simple reason that it’s too effort consuming, and genuine desire is unsustainable within that constant effort. Maintaining Frame demands a voluntary, uncoerced, desired compliance.

What I’m suggesting is that men simply not invest themselves in women whose Alpha interest in them is mitigated by doubt or an obvious SMV imbalance. This is difficult for most men as it conflicts with our want for an idealized romance with a woman – a want for a love that requires a mutual definition with a woman lacking the capacity to realize this with him. And it’s within that idealized desire men lose Frame and excuse the behaviors of Alpha deference.

The Medium IS the Message

As I’ve written in the past, the Medium IS the Message with women. On some level of consciousness men instinctually understand their relative status with a woman based on the behaviors she directs toward him.

Is she affectionate without being prompted or only when circumstance makes your comfort needed for her?

Is Amused Mastery an easy default for you, or does she resist even playful attempts at it?

Does she initiate sex with you, or is your provocation only ever the precursor to sex?

Is sex even a priority for her (with you)?

Does she make efforts to make things special for you (you both) or is your relationship one of her grading your efforts in qualifying for her Alpha approval of you?

What most guys think are ‘mixed messages’ or confusing behavior coming from a woman is simply due to their inability (for whatever reason) to make an accurate interpretation of why she’s behaving in such a manner. Usually this boils down to a guy getting so wrapped up in a girl that he’d rather make concessions for her behavior than see it for what it really is. In other words, it’s far easier to call it ‘mixed messages’ or fall back on the old chestnut of how fickle and random women are, when in fact it’s simply a rationale to keep themselves on the hook, so to speak, because they lack any real, viable, options with other women in their lives. A woman that has a high interest level in a guy has no need (and less motivation) to engage in behaviors that would compromise her status with him. Women of all ILs will shit test, and men will pass or fail accordingly, but a test is more easily recognizable when you consider the context in which they’re delivered.

Are you making psychological concessions with a woman who’s never displayed an Alpha deference to you?

The Origin of Alpha

“Safe sex, safe clothing, safe hairspray, safe ozone layer,…too late! Everything that’s been achieved in the history of mankind has been achieved by not being safe.”
– Lemmy Kilmister, Mötorhead

In the Think Like a Woman post comments Rational Reader Jeremiah presented me with a well worn question:

My question is, Tomassi, do you think alpha traits are usually learned or genetically inherited? What percentage of modern men “get it” and of the men who “get it” how many of them have always “gotten it” and how many of them learned to adapt? It is hard to believe there are still naturals out there when feminism is being rammed up the anus of every man before he sprouts his first tooth.

As I’ve illuminated in past posts, I don’t think distilling the essence of Alpha ‘presence’ in a Man is as subjective as most people feel compelled to qualify, enumerate or otherwise yammer on about in as personally identifying a manner as they can muster. In this humble blogger’s estimation Alpha is a state of mind, not a demographic. The manosphere will endlessly debate the qualifications of what is Alpha, but I think for the most part, the influence of an Alpha mindset (whatever the qualifiers) is more or less agreed upon.

However, with this in mind, I think it’s a perfectly valid question to ask whether an Alpha is born that way or molded into his Alpha mindset. This is actually the classic debate psychology has always always put to its various schools of thought; Nature vs. Nurture – is a dynamic influenced by inherent, biological, environmental prompts or is that dynamic a learned, socialized and acculturated phenomenon? And of course the equally classic conflict comes from people attempting to define various dynamics in terms of absolutes, when to greater or lesser degrees a dynamic is influenced by both nature and nurturing elements.

While the Tomassi school of psychology is firmly planted in the nuts and bolts of behaviorism, it’s also important to take into account that external influences can and too often do modify innate, inborn predilections – even inborn self-preservation instincts.

So with this in mind, my perspective on the origin of Alpha is that biology determines the starting point for Alpha, what happens to it from there is modified by a man’s environmental conditions. Alpha ‘energy’, for lack of a better term, is to varying degrees, part of a male human’s biologically determined “starting package”; from there, through social feedback, it’s either refined and developed by his upbringing, acculturation and social affirming, or it’s repressed, constrained and mitigated by his social environment.

When I was in art school one of my most influential teachers told me, “There are two types of artists; those who were born with a natural, innate gift for art, and those who lack that gift, but possess such a passion for art that it drives them to be good at it. The true masters are the artists that combine both natural talent and the drive that comes from a passion for it.” I’ve always referred back to this model in my creative efforts, but I believe this model can be extended beyond just the artistic sense.

The Learned Alpha

Roosh has an excellent breakdown of The Myth of the Natural that perfectly encapsulates the learning theory of Alpha. The premise behind this is that Alpha behavior, and consequently facility with women, comes as a set of modeled behaviors based upon trial and error.

If I were forced to agree on what a natural is, it would be a man who’s a prodigy of sex—someone who gets laid way above other men with no formal instruction in game. This means he was not exposed to any 12 DVD “Cocky Humor” sets or seminars in a hotel room with three dozen other guys. You look at him and think, “Wow, he gets laid automatically. He was born to get laid!”

But he wasn’t. Just because he didn’t read a book doesn’t mean he didn’t learn through trial and error like you did, practicing his game on a large number of women. It doesn’t mean that he wasn’t conscious and deliberate with his behavior, incrementally improving his moves and tactics over a long period of time. He has experimented like you have experimented, and he has also connected his attempts with results to figure out what works and what doesn’t.

He may not be obsessive about it enough to log his data into a spreadsheet, but he’s mindful and aware of what he’s doing. He understands the mechanism behind charm and can often turn it on or off depending on what he wants. He has learned the type of humor and story-telling that gets a positive response in women. The last thing you can say about him was that he was born into the world with the “automatic” ability to fuck a lot of girls.

Essentially what Roosh explores here is a very basic behavioral psychology premise – macro-psychological dynamics to micro-psychological schema are developed, deliberately or unconsciously, through a process of deductive trial and error management. Whether you’re aware of it or not, everyone has Game to varying degrees. Every man you know has some concept of behaviors and mental attitudes he believes will best help him arrive at sexual intimacy with a woman. Even the worst Blue Pill Beta believes he has some idea of how best to get with a girl.

All of this proto-Game has been in a constant state of trial and error management since you were five years old and had your first interaction with the opposite sex on the kindergarten playground, right up to the point when you discovered the Red Pill. And you will continue to modify your old behavior and mental sets based upon the new information available to you after you adopt formalized Game. In fact, in its rawest sense, the PUA community, the manosphere and all its permutations are really a meta-effort in behavioral modification by way of experimentation and information feedback.

For some this learning process comes easier than it does for others. Again Roosh:

The reason he blows you away isn’t because of his genetics, but because of how early he started. A unique set of circumstances threw him into the sex game years before you, during a time he was lucky enough to be surrounded by giggly schoolgirls. By the time you did your first approach, he had already practiced his game on hundreds of women.

While I do agree with this from a behavioral standpoint, this is where I have to depart from accepting Roosh’s theory entirely. There are far too many biological and environmental determinants involved in developing an Alpha male to ascribe an Alpha status based solely on learned behavior. The simple, observable, fact is that a genetically better looking, more physically arousing male is going to statistically have more opportunities to experiment and develop his Alpha Game prowess than a less physically impressive male. In theory, a man with a more advantageous physical presence will “start earlier” in his process of deductively evaluating behaviors since his efforts will be more frequently encouraged by the women who are naturally attracted to his physique.

Unfortunately all of that assumes developing a behavioral set in a vacuum. There’s literally a world of environmental conditions and variables that would predispose a man towards behavioral development of Alpha status or (more often) limit him from it. Roosh touches on this:

At this point you may be thinking, “Well, there have to be guys who were born with it. Look at Mozart!”

Nobody questions that Mozart’s achievements were extraordinary compared with those of his contemporaries. What’s often forgotten, however, is that his development was equally exceptional for his time. His musical tutelage started before he was four years old, and his father, also a skilled composer, was a famous music teacher and had written one of the first books on violin instruction. Like other world-class performers, Mozart was not born an expert—he became one.

I don’t think this example excludes for a natural, innate talent, but it does help to illustrate the environment’s role in molding a person by limiting or encouraging his behavioral development and ultimately his personality. In the Mozart example we see the success story (the story of a master artist) of a natural talent encouraged and developed to potential by favorable external conditions. Mozart was the perfect storm of natural talent and an ideal environment for nurturing it, thus giving him the advantage of an “early start” in his behavioral trial and error efforts.

Jeremiah laments, “It is hard to believe there are still naturals out there when feminism is being rammed up the anus of every man before he sprouts his first tooth” and of course this is a negative example of an environment (deliberately) averse to nurturing an Alpha mindset. There’s no shortage of examples, but feminization from a behavioral psychology perspective, is nothing less than a socialized effort in deliberate behavioral modification of men’s natural drives and predilections to better fit the feminine imperative. As men socialized in an all-encompassing, pervasive, fem-centric reality, we tend to see “Natural Alphas” as outliers because somehow, through some combination of innate gift and external development, these Men have developed themselves into an Alpha state despite the meta-environment we find ourselves in.

The Natural Alpha

A lot of people call my credibility into question when they read my holding Corey Worthington up as an example of an apex Alpha. Guys who believe that Alpha should necessarily mean “virtuous leaders of men” are understandably insulted by Corey’s indifferent Alpha swagger. As I started in this post, the ‘Qualities of Alpha’ debates aren’t going away, but I think there’s an overall consensus among the manosphere and legitimate psychologists alike that there is an innate (probably testosterone fueled) Alpha drive that manifests itself in human males.

No one has to teach the average, healthy, five-year-old boy how to be Alpha – he gets it on his own. In various contexts that ‘lil’ Alpha’ wants to explore his surroundings, take risks, see what works and see what doesn’t, even when the consequences may be endangering himself or destroying the thing he took apart to see how it worked. It may manifest as a boy attempting to ride wheelies on his bike or a kid tinkering with his dad’s computer, but that unrefined, irrationally confident, Alpha swagger, is by order of degrees, an innate element unique to the male condition.

When a boy is unencumbered with an adult capacity for abstract thinking (ages 3-21 progressively) he is as Alpha as he will ever be. He is unapologetically Alpha and it takes a lifetime, and an entire world of feminized social conditioning to repress and/or crush that Alpha vigor and turn him into the pliable Beta the feminine imperative needs to insure its social primacy. This is precisely why the raw, irresponsible, irrepressible, obliviously un-self-aware Alpha energy of the Alpha Buddah/Corey Worthingtons of the world offend our sensibilities so well.

All of the Game theory, PUA techniques, even feminine-serving appeals to Man-Up! or any other effort designed to help men better mimic or internalize an Alpha behavioral or mind set, all of those efforts’ latent purpose is to return a man back to that primal Alpha energy the five-year-old you had in spades.