Manosphere misogynists like to tell themselves fairy tales about women. Their favorite such tale, repeated endlessly, is one called “The Cock Carousel” – sometimes referred to in expanded form as the “Alpha Asshole Cock Carousel” or the “Bad Boy Cock Carousel.” (Hence that Rooster-riding gal you see in this blog’s header about half the time.)
Despite the different names, the story is always, monotonously, the same: In their late teens and twenties, when they’re at the height of their sexual appeal, women (or at least the overwhelming majority of them) have sex in rapid succession with an assortment of charismatic but unreliable alpha males and “bad boys” who make their vaginas (or just ‘ginas) tingle. Then, sometime in their mid-to-late twenties, these women “hit the wall,” with their so-called sexual market value (or SMV) dropping faster than Facebook’s stock price. As Roissy/Heartiste puts it, in his typically overheated prose:
So sad, so tragic, the inevitable slide into sexual worthlessness that accompanies women, the withering tick tock of the cosmic clock stripping their beauty in flayed bits of soulletting mignons like psychological ling chi. A sadistic thief in the night etching, billowing, draping and sagging a new affront to her most preciously guarded asset.
While many women try to pretend they’ve still “got it,” even at the ripe old age of thirty, they inevitably have to either get off or get thrown off the “cock carousel.” At this point the more savvy women glom onto some convenient “beta male” who, while somewhat lacking in sexual appeal, will at least be a good husband and provider for them – and in many cases the children they’ve had with alpha male seed. Those women who don’t accept the new reality are destined to end up alone and childless, surrounded by cats.
To borrow the phrase South Park used in its episodes about Scientology and Mormonism, this is what manosphere men actually believe. Not only that, but they claim that this fairy tale is based on real science.
So who are these mysterious alpha males that get the women so excited? As one guide to pickup artist (PUA) lingo puts it:
In animal hierarchies, the Alpha Male is the most dominant, and typically the physically strongest member of the group. For example, in wolf packs, the “alpha wolf” is the strongest member of the pack, and is the leader of the group. This position of leadership is often achieved by killing or defeating the previous Alpha Male in combat. Alpha wolves have first access to food as well as mating privileges with the females of the pack.
Social status among human social groups is less rigidly defined than in the animal kingdom, but there are some recognizable parallels. Although people don’t often engage in physical violence to achieve dominance, there are still recognizable leaders in different fields who have wide access to material resources and women.
Because the qualities of the Alpha Male (such as social dominance and leadership) are attractive to women, many PUAs have adopted these ideals as models of emulation. In fact, the term “alpha” has come be shorthand for the qualities of an attractive man, and it is a common refrain among PUAs to be “more alpha” or to “out alpha” competitors.
There’s a certain logic to all this. But unfortunately for the PUAs and other manospherians the notion of the Alpha male is based on bad science. The notion of Alpha dominance, as the definition above notes, came originally from studies of wolf packs. Even if we assume that wolf behavior is somehow a good model upon which to base our understanding of human romance – as manosphere men and evolutionary psychologists tend to do – the science behind the Alpha male wolf has now come completely undone, with many of those who promulgated the theory in the first place decades ago now explicitly repudiating it.
The problem, you see, is that the studies underlying the notion of the alpha male wolf, who aggressively asserts his dominance over beta males in order to rule the pack, were all based on observations of wolves in captivity. In the real world, wolf packs don’t work that way at all. Most wolf packs are basically wolf families, with a breeding pair and their pups. When male pups reach adulthood, they don’t fight their fathers for dominance — they go out and start their own families.
As noted wolf behavior expert L. David Mech, one of those who helped to establish and popularize the notion of the alpha wolf in the first place, explains on his website:
The concept of the alpha wolf is well ingrained in the popular wolf literature at least partly because of my book “The Wolf: Ecology and Behavior of an Endangered Species,” written in 1968, published in 1970, republished in paperback in 1981, and currently still in print, despite my numerous pleas to the publisher to stop publishing it. Although most of the book’s info is still accurate, much is outdated. We have learned more about wolves in the last 40 years then in all of previous history.
One of the outdated pieces of information is the concept of the alpha wolf. “Alpha” implies competing with others and becoming top dog by winning a contest or battle. However, most wolves who lead packs achieved their position simply by mating and producing pups, which then became their pack. In other words they are merely breeders, or parents, and that’s all we call them today, the “breeding male,” “breeding female,” or “male parent,” “female parent,” or the “adult male” or “adult female.” In the rare packs that include more than one breeding animal, the “dominant breeder” can be called that, and any breeding daughter can be called a “subordinate breeder.”
So the dominant male wolves – those whom manosphere dudes would still call the alphas – achieve this position not by being sexy badasses but simply by siring and taking responsibility for pups. To use the terminology in the manner of manosphere dudes, alphas become alphas by acting like betas. That’s right: alphas are betas. (For more of the details, see this paper by Mech; it’s in pdf form.)
Also, they’re wolves and not humans, but that’s a whole other kettle of anthropomorphized fish.
As if Inconvenient’s entire posting history wasn’t one big wank.
“Responsible mate choices”? Do you think women are clairvoyant or something? No wonder you hate them so much. Way to blame all women for the fact that some of them get abandoned by some asshole men.
I don’t hate women at all. I love them enough to give them the excitement they crave. If anything, it’s the manginas who express their hatred for women by being such passive bores to them.
Is “I don’t hate women! I love them.. to look at/fuck!” on the MRA/PUA bingo card?
Yes, and what about the women you don’t want to fuck or look at?
Yep, he now pulls out the ‘it’s you who hate women, because you actually listen to them and give them what they say they want instead of insisting you know better than they do what they really want.’
Paternalistic bullshit.
Hey Some Guy…,
If you want to write about bizzaroland fairytales involving misandry start your own blog.
Reminds me of when I had to actually explain to someone why rapists and sexual harrassers who victimize women don’t just “like women too much.”
Liking someone means respecting them. If you can’t respect women, Truthy, then you hate them.
I’ve asked this before and never received anything like a satisfactory answer, but I’ll give it another go:
If the whole alpha/beta dynamic, SMV, PUA, blah-blah-blah, thing is the absolute truth then how on earth are there still guys all over the internet complaining about friend-zoning, hypergamy, Brad Pitt, incel, etc.? I mean, there are tons of PUA and PUA promoting sites that go to great lengths to explain and advise this paradigm. There seem to be any number of men who insist that they were beta losers until discovering how to present as alphas and now they are masters of the pump and dump with harems of women, and manna and honey falling from the skies?
How can there be any lonely, incel, non Brad Pitts left in the world with all of the science-y, evopsych based advice on how to present as alpha and score chicks?
@Inconvenient “Truth”:
Ah, hypocrisy. A favorite amongst those easily-triggered PUA’s who complain about “shaming language” and refer to our host as “porcine”. This should be good.
It is actually completely inaccurate. Care to show me any numbers reflecting how many married men or those in quasi-marital relationships raise children that aren’t their own?
Once again, your idiocy is so superconcentrated, it burns. “Single motherhood exists” =/= “the overwhelming majority of women hump alphas, who are the only ones who get to reproduce, and then betas raise their offspring.” Seriously, did you cut school the day they taught thinking there?
Once again — care to produce evidence that shows most married men raise children who aren’t their own? Take note, though, I don’t consider the depths of your ass a reliable source.
1. Wasn’t the protagonists of EatPrayLove childless? Presumably by choice?
2. If the protagonist went to seek out men like you, it certainly wasn’t to have your children. While I haven’t seen the movie or read the book, I don’t remember critics or audiences characterizing it as a woman’s quest for babyz. Once again, you completely miss the point and demonstrate a woeful lack of understanding of how “passing your genes along” actually works.
What can I say? I’m good at multi-tasking. You, on the other hand, lack the most fundamental understanding of the most basic things — like the fact that flinging gratuitous insults doesn’t actually disprove what I’m saying.
I love you enough to heartily approve your decision to do everything possible to make sure your genes die with you.
@feministgamer
That’s truly the Lord’s work you were doing there. Then again, I was raised Unitarian, so my understanding of “the Lord’s work” might be a bit off.
Hellkell – I think it’s unfair to compare Inconvenient’s posts to anything as harmless and fun as wanking.
My favourite is the cat reaching for the counter and the kitten copying. So young and already headed for a life of crime. *shakes head sadly*
@Nobinayamu- I have wondered this as well.
In fact, I have read “the Game” (for sheer rubbernecking thrills), and from what I’ve read (even if we assume that the story is completely truthy and not embellished in any way, which is doubtful), it takes a LOT of work to get successful at PUA and get to the point where you can make out/have sex with pretty much “any woman.”
PUA is basically a pyramid scheme. It’s the “Scentsy” and “Avon” for lonely guys who want to get “better” at sexing the ladies but who don’t actually want to do anything to improve themselves. It promises all sorts of magical results but those results actually require you to become VERY ADEPT AT SOCIAL COMPETENCY. So basically it tricks guys who are lazy and awful to stop whining about how they never get laid and develop necessary social skills for meeting, talking to, and having sex with women. Of course, that’s the problem- if you ONLY learn how to seduce for sex, you find out really quickly that it’s kind of a hollow victory, especially since most of these guys are also Nice Guys who want love and a relationship and all that stuff (as most of them have the misogynistic belief that women will love you forever if they give you access to their vaginas). If they actually do get to a point where they’re having lots of sex regularly (after a lot of work and personal sacrifice and money spent), they are often amazed and confused that most women don’t WANT to be in relationships with them past having sex.
Plus, 99% of the guys who are into the whole PUA lifestyle are selling products. That’s pretty much the definition of huckster right there. I can understand some of the guys who outline PUA-like social competency skills for people who are pathologically shy and who want to get better at social interaction in general, or at least with those who intimidate them, but most of those people are genuinely helpful, don’t sell products (beyond maybe a book that they’ve written that’s totally optional because their blog is free), and they don’t give off the rapey vibe.
So I honestly must wonder to myself- if they’ve found the magic bullet, the red pill and they can SEE THE MATRIX, why the hell do they keep on whining about this shit? Wouldn’t they have been able to beat the system by now?
it’s nice to know youre the sort of dumbass who lazily reasons from anecdotes because thinking is just to much work for his poor widdle bwain
oh god, do you have any idea how fucking lame this shit sounds
shorter inconvenient truth: i may live a shallow, boring life based on fleeting moments of physical gratification, but if you criticize my banality your just denying RARGH BLARGH SCIENCE
“I don’t hate women at all. I love them enough to give them the excitement they crave.”
…the suspect said to a reporter, while awaiting trial.
In addition to the conclusion you reach (which I think is completely correct), I think the “problem” is that the overwhelming majority of PUA’s – despite their “I iz an Alpha nao!” chest-beating – identify with the “hapless beta”. They resent the fact that they were cheated out of the pussy that was rightfully theirs in their youth, and they resent the fact that women are only willing to settle for them when they can get no better. Which I suppose would be a bit hurtful, especially if you believe that the “settling” isn’t based on any attraction, but a desire for financial support. It’s a bleak, loveless world they live in, and I don’t envy them.
What confuses me is the blanket assumption that all of these discarded cock-carousel riders will have multiple Alpha spawn when they settle for their “hapless beta”. Do women only use birth control with Betas?
I don’t hate women at all. I love them enough to give them the excitement they crave. If anything, it’s the manginas who express their hatred for women by being such passive bores to them.
Who’s poisoning the well?
You don’t love women, you crave them. That’s not love. You don’t see them as people, but as things to make use of. You tell yourself it’s giving them excitement, but then you are off to the next one, because the woman you just made use of, doesn’t do it for you any more.
I’m glad I’m not like you. Angry desperation sucks, and I don’t see women as manipulative bitches; while ignoring that men, such as yourself, engaging in fuck-em, and forget-em, and call them whores and bitches for not being loyal, are the reason your world (if it existed) is full of men and women coping with abandoned children.
That’s some set of ethics you’ve got there, and a twisted, self-centered, narcissistic, worldview.
And when your looks are gone? When the money isn’t enough to attract some ignorant young thing to your bosom for the night? Those “lowly Betas” with the companionship (and even the “second rate” sex) will be living the better life.
Amused: He will trot out the stat that in cases where a man suspects his partner has cheated on him, 66 percent of the time he is wrong and the child is his.
@Pecunium
I mean, also, men who don’t have sex and are just living their lives are having better lives than PUAs, right now. I think not spending all your time trying to manipulate and coerce people around you is its own reward.
lowquacks: Also, wish I could show you guys, but there’s been some sort of dust storm outside and everything outside looks like it’s been colour-shifted to a pinky-orange colour. It’s happened a few times this year. Try imagining it; you couldn’t really go too extreme. Very haunting.
I know just how it looks.
Ugh: Tru-dat.
Even when I was feeling bitter and unhappy about a failed relationship I think I was doing better than that. It’s the craving for conquest that fucks ’em up. Everything becomes a goal, and they can’t even see the roses, much less stop to smell them.
@Nobinayamu,
Because culture and masculinity-as-performance makes human “alphas” context-dependent. In MMA, it’s beating the other guys, literally. In the Philharmonic, it’s being the conductor. In the bar, being the bouncer/manager/DJ. That’s why office-job betas are so upset about swaggering job-free “cool-breeze alphas” (and we all know what that’s code for.) It’s also a *performance*, meaning one must get the execution at least somewhat right even if one has the position on paper.
I believe in this stuff, sure, but I’m also a Zionist, and was raised poor and foreign which I’m sure feeds into it. Learning to tolerate ambiguous social situations and being less goal-oriented and agenda-driven was a big deal for me and pick-up made that easier.
As in its totally meaningless? Do you have a working definition of “alpha” other than “whatever I feel is Alpha at any given time?”