The TRUE definition of Alpha Males

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Well the reason I posted this here, is because a lot of guys (not just on here) seem to blame a significant portion of their lack of success on "Alpha-male as*holes". Now, I am not one of those people, I understand that it is my own flaws that is hampering my chances with women.

But most of the time, they ALWAYS get referred to as jerks or as*holes, when in fact, that is not entirely true at all. And it is always assumed that to be successful with women, you have to be an "alpha male as*hole". And that is simply not the case at all, being confident in yourself doesn't mean being an as*hole. I'm all for humility however, as I think it is needed to balance our characters.

Drowbot, you raised a very good question there. I do not think that the Beta is not good, but I believe that there is a fair amount of Betas out there who are jealous of the Alpha. And yes you are right, in animal kingdoms, Betas would often challenge Alphas and sometimes win, thus becoming the Alpha. However, a Beta cannot lead a pack, as the pack will be run by force, and send the pack into chaos. And when the Alpha and the Beta are both killed (inevitably), the Gamma, being the most respected that is still alive, becomes the Alpha and rules it in peace.

So to answer your question, no I do not think that Betas are bad. Also, I think that character traits seperate pretty much everybody, so not every Alpha, Beta, Gamma etc, will be the same.

I don't think the people that complain about "Alpha-male as*holes" aren't really using the right label, though. I think those people they refer to are just the guy that got the girl(s) they wanted and they are applying a label to them that doesn't really fit. It has nothing to do with being an Alpha male.

I've always known my failure with women was my own fault. And while there were occasions where I have felt that a girl I liked was with a guy that was a jerk (sometimes true, sometimes just my jealousy), I don't think I ever thought of them as "alpha males." I think there is a lot of undo baggage attached to the term here. But, baggage aside, I still the the concept is a harmful one to society as a whole, as is the mob-mentality that goes with it.

I trust the females' definitions of 'alpha males' more than any male's, no offense deadeyexx but their instincts can detect better what's an alpha male and what's not than yours (despite that we have the instincts to detect and respect an alpha too), so their definitions would be more accurate.

Yes, you're right tho, alpha= leader, but you still need the qualities mentioned by hale_bopp in order to become a 'leader', so I find her definition the most accurate here.

You can be an 'alpha' by academic intelligence in a class room , but social skills (social 'intelligence) is a more crucial quality.

I made a post once describing the types of alpha men:

I think it is perfectly reasonable to hold that view and I understand your sentiment, even though I may have my own conclusions to the subject. And it is often the case that many are not using the right label when discussing the men who "get the girls"

Everything in the bolded is very interesting. I don't think much of it is to be dwelt upon, but it is certainly food for thought.

Except I already proved that her definition was flawed since it would, in effect, define me as an alpha, which given practical observation is not true...

I agree. Her description is of her ideal male, not a leader. I can give a personal example of this, too. I have spoken on here before of the pointless "team-building" camps my employer forces us to attend, so I won't go into great detail on that, but at one such camp, we were tasked with forming a loop of rope into a five-pointed star with the condition that everybody in group keep at least one hand on the rope at all times. A leader quickly emerged, possessing all of the qualities described above. He proceeded to give orders and throw out ideas. I knew exactly how to accomplish our task a few seconds after it was given to us, but, in typical Aspie fashion (didn't know I was one at the time), I kept my mouth shut to avoid attention. After a good 45 minutes of failure, another person voiced an idea similar to mine. The Alpha kept ignoring her. Finally, after another 30 minutes of his pointless BS, I got tired of standed around and finally, loudly, told the leader to stop and listen to the young lady's idea and then I explained why her idea (my own as well) would work. A few mintues later, it was done.

Alpha males are great at rallying people behind them, but more often than not they don't really know what to rally them towards.

How comes you fit into her definition????


Let's see :




You're not a decent guy, you still live with your parents.




Kind, so what?




You're not confident with yourself at all. You hate yourself.




Ok so you are, so what?





Ok maybe so you are (as you claimed), so what?


Now, here the more important part:




Do you have a lot of friends now?





Girls don't romantically like you, girls only befriend you or just use you as academic assistant.




You bag on your parents.

You are very unhappy with yourself.


So how you are qualified as an alpha according to her definition?

I like how a lot of that was just dismissal of the points... So what if I'm kind, treat people right, and get along with lots of people? I see that as more important than anything else listed... I'm not even talking about romance at this point, just about being a good person...

Anyway, yes, I do have quite a few friends at my church (Although to be fair, most of them are much older or younger than myself because that's the population makeup of said church)...

As for the "decent" line, I don't think we're speaking the same english here (it is a notoriously complicated language, after all)... When I hear the word "decent" I'm thinking of someone who has good manners, good hygiene, and good sense (check, check, and check)... I've never heard the word "decent" to mean "living on your own"...

I don't see the need to act like a bully and pick on other people (which is what I interpreted the term "bag" to be, not "living off of")... bullying other people is a fast way to get them and others to not like you...

And I don't hate my parents at all... I may become a little annoyed with them every now and then, but who doesn't get a little aggravated with their family at times?

The one point that you are essentially correct on however is the confidence issue... I do freeze up in unfamiliar situations (which includes romance)... yet romance is pretty much the only social aspect I'm having trouble with at this point, which is why I tend to only post in L&D (no need to look for support in other areas like school when I'm doing fairly well on my own in that regard)...

Well prince, I like your analogies of alpha male types. It was a very insightful read. I noticed the only type to mention social skills or leadership thru personality was in the king archetype though. The other 3 kinds had followers too, but mostly based on useful qualities (strength, intelligence, talent). I actually agree a lot with this, and have seen all kinds in action.

I've got a lot of knight qualities, but am a magician at heart. An odd combination that leads to mixed (but never boring) results.

But then you go on to say how aspies can't be alpha at all for lacking only king qualities.
This is certianly true if a guy is exploited for his abilities & recieves nothing in return. However, that seems easily fixed if you're able to realize the value of your abilities & don't let people use you. I bet a lot of aspies can do that.

I'd never heard of the term alpha male (except in literal reference to wolf packs) before I saw discussions of seduction on forums like this on the Internet. Why do some of the guys here have some almost mythological awe over it, as if it were something great to aspire to? This concept, when applied to human males, only perpetuates the constraints of traditional maleness. They are, for example, the kind of people who would like a corporate hierarchy.

To the OP......I hear ya.

This debate is over the definition of what it means to be an alpha male. Hell, the thread is even [i]titled[/b] "The true definition of an alpha male"



It's also the reason that civilization exists in the first place to even be able to go to hell in a handbasket. Humanity wouldn't be around today for you to have problems with it without this system. Humans are not solitary creatures; they have no evolutionary advantages other than their ability to organize and communicate better than any other species on the planet. Humans *cannot* survive on their own, unlike many self-sustaining animal species. They *must* form into packs to even have a chance. And the alpha male system is required in order for civilization to function for one specific reason that you've overlooked:



The majority of the human population is not capable of doing this. They simply do not have the mental or ethical capacity. Thus, in order for the species to survive and thrive, somebody has to tell all the dumb people what to do because they won't be able to judge or figure this stuff out on their own.

Not to mention, this method is grossly inefficient; it requires everybody to spend most of their time and effort figuring out any given idea is really the best one and less time and effort actually doing it. In pure survival terms, while Hunting Group A composed entirely of Theta Males debates on what the best way to kill a Sabertooth tiger for lunch is, one of four things happen:

1: Hunting Group B with an alpha male has already killed the sabertooth tiger because they acted on the alpha's word, regardless of how efficient his idea was. In purely pragmatic terms, the alpha male group *is* more efficient because they are competing with hunting group A and obtaining the kill while Group A goes hungry.
2: Sabertooth tiger kills all of Hunting Group A because they weren't able to react with organized direction (because they have to debate everything first instead of just reacting to commands given by a leader) when they were ambushed.
3: Hunting Group A starves to death because they took too long debating how to do things, hence cannot kill enough sabertooth tigers to feed themselves both because the sabertooth tigers tend to relocate before they get around to planning their attack and because the time it takes them to kill sabertooth tigers is simply much longer overall.
4 (my favorite): Hunting Group B attacks and either kills [The competent/freethinking Theta males] or subdues and assimilates [the incompetent Theta males] hunting group A (under alpha male direction, of course) in order to remove the competition and get all the meat for themselves. They succeed for the same reasons outlined in (2).

As you can see, while the scientific method may result in the 'best overall method' of doing things, and is indeed the preferred method in specific academic contexts where finding the 'best' answer is the primary goal, and also where practical concerns are less restrictive, finding the best method every time is not practically feasible for everything, particularly when another method still gets the job done just as well. Ideally, the perfect system would indeed be to have one single alpha male with perfect judgment that everyone just follows, or to take it one step further, a hive mind. (You will be assimilated; resistance is futile.) However, in reality the former is even less likely to happen than finding a theta group where every person is competent enough to hold the team together, and the latter opens a whole other can of worms when it comes to morality and philosophy.



According to most people in this thread, Obama fits the description of an alpha male far better than Bush did.



Better than listening to nobody at all while still not thinking for themselves, in my opinion. Which is what most people who listen to others blindly would have done. You have the cause and effect mixed up; people follow leaders blindly because they can't think for themselves, not the other way around.



Well, for that particular example... Yeah. And I think that what this poster was trying to say wasn't that this system was the best way of doing things, in fact he seems to be leading towards your views. His statement was simply a statement of fact, that there is no distinction between 'should' or 'shouldn't'; this is simply how things do work regardless of whether you accept them or not, and that is not going to change. In fact, in order for it to change, society would have to be completely destroyed first, and rebuilt from the ground up. And I can guarantee you that in the rebuilding process, alpha males will emerge. So while in theory, maybe things *could* be better if we could get it to the point where alphas weren't required anymore (or if it just happened to work out that way from the start), but practically there is no possible way to do this, at least not without sacrificing far more resources than we could ever hope to gain back by switching the system.



Moose actually are an example of solitary creatures... They live on their own, only interacting with each other when it comes time to breed. There's no pack system at all there, let alone alpha, beta, gamma designations, etc. The closest they get is during mating season when they actually physically compete with each other to prove who is literally the most physically fit and capable of surviving and, therefore, has the best genes for breeding. That's far closer to using reason than anything that most humans do to choose mates.

for those who disbelieve the alpha's existence among humans: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1 ... enome.html

A problem I see here with this treatment of "alpha male" is that it overlooks a key element of actually being an alpha male: retaining your alpha male status over time. The OP correctly points out that others, too, can achieve alpha male status, and that many who aren't (yet) alphas probably on some level aspire to someday achieve that level of status. Ergo, competition. So the alpha male has a vested interest in making sure that he protects his position and status because he knows that others are clamoring for what he has. So, in a less than magnanimous act, the alpha may from time to time deliberately act to deliver some blows to certain betas that the alpha may perceive as threats (so the "kind-hearted" part of the OP's definition of alpha-male is neither here nor there in my judgment; the Alpha has to do what he has to do to remain alpha, he has to sometimes get down in the mud and slug it out. You cannot miss this when defining the alpha male, whether it be human or beast). The OP's treatment of "alpha", as someone correctly pointed out, is a very idealized and somewhat mythological representation, almost like a super hero.

You don't just retain that alpha status, in most situations, by just being a "good guy." Sometimes the alpha has to be dominant and ruthless solely for the purpose of keeping what he already has. And for the record, I am not saying this is necessarily a bad thing. Now in countries where the rule of law is not closely abided by we can clearly see the negative consequences of mad men run amok using their power and oppression to maintain control over a people and to retain their dictatorial status. So if we are to use politics in example then I don't really like the United States as an example of pure alphadom. Sure it's still a social outcome when we choose a president but there is a common understanding in most democracies that we as a people are to be subservient to the rule of law, not to men, and to work within and respect that system. I'm sure no one here needs a lesson on civics so I'll move on from this point. I will say though, there is a HUGE difference between a Rush Limbaugh/Michael Moore versus a Jim Jones. Do I really need to go further to make that point? And that's not to say the poster who used Limbaugh and Jones in the same sentence necessarily agrees they are to be equated in the same sentence (at least I hope he doesn't feel this way!)

Ha. Alpha males are overrated. I prefer quiet nerdy guys