/dis/ - Discussion

It's just a meme at this point. Unironic use of "alpha" and "beta" is cringy thing beta male do.

No, I do not believe in that PUA nonsense.
Humans do not have that kind of hierarchy. they build a hierarchy in the different ways than animals who rely on their physical power.

Human power is essentially defined by the number of connections they have
You do not need any skills or strength for that. You just need to make as many friends as possible who can provide you help when needed.
and when you have many connections you can start acting as a hub, which connects those people to each other.

Essentially this is all about the social network. The person who has the highest amount of connections to people with highest total power is "alpha" but you do not know how many connection or friends that person has, so it is impossible to tell who is real "alpha".

Alpha proclaimed by PUA is nothing else than a narcissist. Who makes the extraordinary effort to show themselves but this does not provide any tangible benefits. it just cost a lot of resources and exposes them to the significant danger. those people are nothing more than clowns who entertain public and that way become somewhat popular, but they do not have any real power.

To varying extents.


There are people who are more dominant or submissive, and it can shift with who's energetic and what's at hand. And besides the ranking of who's most ofte. first to decide what they're about (at a given moment, anyway), there are alien factors that can't be applied the same to packs. An individual with PTSD might cower when they're in a fine situation, or be a total wild card.

It's not a simple "calling shots is good" thing tho. Exhibit A: People causing pointless drama just to feel alpha. Being a loud obnoxious drama queen doesn't make you alpha. People who either oppose a good call or ar hi e tooth and nail over every petty thing, and even those who lord their position of being in charge over others, as that breaks down pack integrity, are idiotic. Being alpha might generally feel good if you're actually qualified to call the shots, but leaning back and being B type, is fine too.

In short, it's as much about energy and being the face of your group as strength and courage.
One might be thr alpha in that he instinctively speaks for your clan, another in that he decides where to spark or whatever. Each simply initiates their decisions proactively without being told to, and perhaps one's an athlete who's charismatic, the other a traumatized druggie that gives no fucks and is the first to fight or wear your girlfriend's panties.

Hi

>>7466

The slutty, slutty part of me wishes this was a real thing, but like... there is an objective answer to this. It's been studied to death, and the answer is no. It's impossible to fit 50% of the world into only two personality types, and behavior is much more the result of social conditioning than anything innate. So with men, we see populations molding to whatever that society has conditioned men to believe is culturally "male" in that society, and it changes with time.

Aggression = Male is a relatively new thing. Victorian gentlemen would be AGHAST at us placing such importance on fisticuffs.

Crying = Feminine is so new that there exist movies that show a zeitgeist where the exact opposite was true. Until REALLY recently, like the 1970s level recently, crying was a manly thing to do. Sparacus cries, Gilgimesh cries, dude in old war movies cry.

So... personality is largely based on culture- there just aren't any innate traits to pick out. And I'm not honestly sure what the "alpha" and "beta" thing is all about- in my head an "Alpha" is the jock dudebro and the "Beta" is the nerdy kid- but like... the nerds watched DBZ and found out that you could get ripped and then go play video games about it. The culture changed in such a way that "nerd" shit became mainstream, and we've got guys who get ripped as shit for their 300 cosplay. Because of that, of how in-flux this thing is, there's no way to classify all men into two categories, and when classification is impossible and overlap is such that a ven diagram would be a circle- then it's just not a real thing.

Having said that, if we assign the term "Alpha" to "having leadership qualities" and "Beta" to "Being good in group dynamics and shying away from leadership"- and also drop the gendered notion, then that IS a real thing, and it's largely focused on a psychological concept called Locus of Control that IS innate and genetic, and can be observed as early as three months. But I'm almost positive that that's not what you're talking about and there are 5 levels, not 2, and they're pretty fluid based on things like current mood, developmental level, and emotional intelligence.

I think I do, but not for the reason the idea generally gets traction for. In wolves, the development of an alpha/beta mentality is the result of captivity stress. Specifically, wolves naturally live in family groups led by a male and a female and comprising mostly of their offspring and other blood relations. When captive, these naturally social animals are thrown in with other animals of no relation to themselves. The alpha/beta competitive mentality is derived from a confusion of whether the peers in your group are supporting you or competing with you. Humans are far more generally social, but the conditions are recreated by our culture rather than instinct. Most men are taught from childhood to be extremely competitive with their peers, and that expressions of natural emotional vulnerability are a weakness. We've artificially created the conditions for alpha/beta mentality in our own species by incentivising conflict amongst our peers over our emotional needs.