this post was submitted on 14 Mar 2024
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The "alpha/beta" meme was invented by rightwing think tanks in the late 2000's/early 2010's to promote their ideology of rigid social-hierarchies where people at the top are allowed to impose and abuse people of lower social station with impunity, and to police and control the behavior of heterosexual men (it ain't just the LGBTQ's that get their gender-expression policed, ohhh no no no.)
It's important to note that the entire idea about Alpha males is based on a long-discredited theory that was itself based on flawed observations.
It wouldn't even matter if it was "right". The idea of looking to wolves for models of ideal human behavior is wrong for like 17 different reasons, even if it were technically true as a description of wolf behavior.
P.S. why do AlphaBros specifically look at wolves, or lobsters, to instruct us on social hierarchy? There are so many other animals, those seem pretty random choices. And pretty far afield from humans. Wouldn't you at least want something more proximate to us humans on the evolutionary tree? Heck, why not just use humans as a reference point?
P.S. why do AlphaBros specifically look at wolves, or lobsters, to instruct us on social hierarchy? There are so many other animals, those seem pretty random choices. And pretty far afield from humans.
Because other animal choices don't validate the rightwing ideology that places them at the top, which is their entire goal in the first place.
also, and this is a minor and unimportant-to-the-topic point, social hierarchy studies have primarily been done on lobsters and wolves, and not a lot else, not to the same degree. But they made up their ideologically driven conclusions in the first place so they might as well have quoted an imaginary study on bunnies cuz nothing they say could ever possibly matter.
I'm skeptical. I'll grant you wolves, but even then, wolves I feel are no more or less studied than a bunch of other species which are subject of extensive interest, especially primates, dolphins and orcas, but also lions, hyenas, meerkats, bees and ants. At least those are all studied well enough that we have plenty to pick from.
I appreciate your point though that its ideologically driven anyway and that it's all moot and 100% agree.