Gammas resist Game

Unsurprisingly, John Scalzi, a quintessential gamma male, finds the idea of the socio-sexual hierarchy to be distasteful:

Hey, dudes: If you spend any real time thinking about who's an "Alpha Male" and who is not, YOU ARE NOT ONE. #FYI
— John Scalzi (@scalzi) August 17, 2012

Mind you, for many of the people for whom the Greek Alphabet gradation of social hierarchy appears important, the working definition of “Alpha Male” seems to work out to “sociopathic assbag.” So maybe you don’t want to be one of those, either.

No, you shouldn't be an alpha male. Or even think about trying to become one. Instead, you should strive to be a soft, pudgy, snarky high nerdling who writes novels inspired by Star Trek. Like John.

This is a good example of the snippy, passive-aggressive behavior of the gamma, who resents the hierarchy because he resents his place in it. There are two primary types of gammas, the first is the sort who is bitter about women, while the second is the sort who imitates women and is bitter about men who outrank him. Scalzi is an excellent example of the latter, right down to his habitual snark, his strong inclination for the verbal over the physical, his feminine solipsism, and his preference for female forms of communication. To give one of many examples of the latter, if you ever hear a man use the word "squee" and he is not quoting a woman, you can be certain that you are dealing with a gamma of the second persuasion. Even if he claims to be using it in irony.

The first part of what Scalzi is saying here is partially true. The natural has no need to think about what he does, because socio-sexually dominant behavior comes to him naturally. However, the assertion is also partially false. Because human beings are very successful mimics and are capable of intelligently modifying their behavior, the synthetic alpha male is not only possible, but his very existence is based upon his having spent a good deal of time and effort thinking about how to go from his original delta or beta status to alpha rank.

Just to kick himself while he's down, @scalzi writes: "I'm not going to lie to you. If I was ever going to write a movie, I'd write a romantic comedy."

Ye cats.... If you want an example of how to lower your socio-sexual rank and underkick your coverage, it would be hard to do better than to follow Scalzi's advice concerning women. As his "creeper" posts show, he simply doesn't understand that being made to feel unsafe and uncomfortable is a primary sexual attractant for women. At least five of Roissy's 16 commandments touch on this in some regard. But perhaps we shouldn't judge him too harshly here, as the reason for his poor grasp of intersexual relations and his observable preference for the feminine over the masculine is not exactly hard to locate.

"Creepiness" is simply a lower rank male instilling sexual discomfort in a woman who considers him beneath her range of acceptable sexual market values. Her negative reaction to his creepiness is primarily an expression of her horror that such a man apparently considers her rank so low as to be potentially within his reach.