Petah?
Thursday, 13 Mar 2025
Exclusive insights, data, and analysis for financial market experts.
Search
Have an existing account?
Sign In
It’s about the whole alpha, beta, delta, sigma bs that some men obsesse over it.
That’s Lucyan David Mech, who die research on wolves and came up with the term “alpha male” and “alpha female” and the theory that wolves live in a strict hierarchy, where the alphas constatnly attack lower ranking wolves.
This has inspired the alpha male/incel bullshit that spreads nowadays.
Mech convinced his publisher to stop publishing the relevant book.
cf: https://www.newyorker.com/science/elements/the-myth-of-the-alpha-wolf
The study lead to the common misconception that wolves live in a hierarchy system where higher ranking wolves aggressively put lower ranking ones into submission when in reality wolves in the wild live in family units with the parents of the pack calling the shots. The wolves they did their study on were unrelated and in captivity which is the wolf equivalent of people in prison
Great example of what happens when you share with the press before being peer reviewed.
He did a study on hierarchies within wolf packs in a national park, where he thought he saw one wolf in charge of all the rest (alpha). He published a book on his findings, and people inexplicably began putting themselves into the categories.
He tried to replicate the study in the wild, only to realize the so called alphas were just parents. He spent years trying to correct his mistake, but the public refused to listen.
its about the whole alpha beta terminology that infests the mind of every young teenager now a days
The phenomenon would still happen, it would just use different names. Like they’d be calling “beta males” castratii or something.
The guy who came up with the hypothesis later apologized for doing so, after realizing it was a mistake. Everyone plays the role of a leader in some aspect of their lives.
There’s an infamous study about wolf behavior that lead to widespread misconceptions about their social structure.
Ever heard that a wolf pack is led by an alpha male? That social ranks among wolves are determined by them fighting for status, with the alpha keeping the others in line by bullying them?
Well, turns out that’s something you only ever see when you lock a bunch of wolves who don’t know each other into an enclosure and leave them to sort things out between themselves.
Turns out that, in the wild, wolf packs are actually family structures consisting of parents and their children, and that they are generally led by one of the parents.
The scientist who published this study has since realized his error and tried to make amends, but unfortunately, his flawed study has since garnered widespread popularity, leading both to people treating their dogs poorly because they thought they needed to establish themselves as the pack leader, and to some particularily deranged people thinking human social dynamics work the same way, and trying to assert themselves as “alphas”, which generally seems to encompass acting like an asshole.
Though it should be noted that such social structures aren’t entirely unheard of. Chicken have them, which is where we get the term “pecking order” from.
That man fucked up my whole childhood. My dad was obcessed with the alpha wolf bullshit and how you have to dominate dogs to train them and he used the same “logic” to raise his 6 kids.
yeah the only time you can accurately call your self an alpha male is if your actively raising a family and are head of the house hold
Typical beta… *rolls eyes*
Some people on the internet convinced themselves that “alpha male” was coined by a guy studying wolves, and that the concept doesn’t exist anywhere in nature, because the guy studying wolves briefly said it exists in wolves then retracted that.
He didn’t coin the term. A guy studying chickens in 1921 did.
[Alpha males](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dominance_hierarchy_species#Primates) are still a thing. In all sorts of species, for all sorts of reasons. Even alpha females, like bonobos, who achieve alpha status by having the most lesbian sex with the other females. These are all still real biological concepts.
But because men who go around calling themselves “alpha male” are annoying as fuck, people are spreading this misinformation to fight back.
It’s misinformation all the way down.
He came up with the idea of an Alpha wolf, which is basically the whole foundation for the modern male self “improvement” movement.
The whole thing has later been discredited even by the man himself, but it sticks in incel communities.
And it is the basis for the omegaverse in fanfiction and that would be a pleasant thing to not know about.
To be fair, if he hadn’t done that study people who take that whole alpha/beta/sigma stuff seriously would have just found another word to describe those perceived “standings”.
I swear, I see some of the funniest memes get posted to this sub.
this is the man that came up with the theory on wolves having the system we call Alpha and Omega thing. Going from Alpha being the leader and the Omega being the Meg Griffin of the pack. However, upon further inspection he discovered his idea was wrong, they work as a family in a way. Unfortunately, the formal idea was favored
While it is true that the term “alpha male” is often misapplied and oversimplified, especially in discussions about human behavior, there are examples in the animal kingdom where the concept can be observed, such as in lions. The concept of a dominant male with a leadership role in the group that are responsible for defending the territory, protecting the pride from rival males, and ensuring their own reproductive success, is well-documented and supported by biological evidence. However, this dynamic is specific to lions and a few other species.
Women with a time machine: goes back in time to stop the man bc they’re a huge omegaverse fan
Alpha Beta Omega misconception.
THe concpet of alpha, beta, omega, delta, sigma, etc. wolves are from a flawed study by him
At least go back and stop chinjut beards.
The one time I get one of these lol
Why isn’t anyone picking up on the real message, here (whether it’s intentional or not)? “Man” and “boy” can be/were/are used in the same way as alpha and beta, and *long* beforehand.
If you had simply looked et the comments of the original post, several people explained it.
People are so dense
oh yeah, some people believe alphas doesnt exist.
The myth is how they are, you say rain doesnt fall upwards and some just get “rain doesn’t fall”
It’s funny how OOP themself use the boys/men dichotomy while bashing on alpha/beta/sigma lol
This man allowed Omegaverse to exist and that is hilarious
DIRECT line between that study and Omegaverse content
The theory that wolves operate in hierarchies consisting of alphas, betas, and others birthed two wildly different plagues: male podcasters and the omegaverse.
Incels would have adopted some other terminology
Eh, while the “Alpha” myth definitely put in a lot of work to justify shitty behaviour, it was behaviour that was already pretty widespread in most of society – it just had a catchy new name.
There will be no or very little of society we know it then (no dogs)