We’re taking a dive into the bizarre world of sigma male affirmations and the disturbing but also very silly “sigma male industrial complex” on YouTube. From the origins of the dubious sigma male concept in the manosphere to its current online popularity, I examine an assortment of the often ludicrous sigma male affirmation videos on YouTube, their claims, and the psychology behind them. I argue that while affirmations can work, they really only do when they are reasonable and believable, which sigma male affirmations are decidedly not.
This video deals with:
*The evolution of the self-aggrandizing “sigma male” concept from niche internet subculture to viral trend
*Fisking of popular sigma male affirmation videos, from dull to downright delusional
*The psychology behind affirmations: why realistic ones can work and grandiose ones backfire
*Breakdowns of sigma male metaphors, from “lone wolves” to “great white sharks among minnows”
*The appeal of the sigma male archetype to socially awkward men seeking a cool, aloof identity
Also: creepy ASMR-style affirmations, hypnotic “masculine frequencies”, and claims of “massively high sexual marketplace value”. The video also contains dumb jokes, and you get to see the interior of the We Hunted the Mammoth manor.
Sorry it’s taken me this long to post this video. I’m trying my best to get on a weekly schedule, which should become a bit easier as I get more videos under my belt.
Feel free to post ideas for future videos in the comments! And whatever else you want, as is WHTM tradition.
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Yey David, another vid!
Don’t worry about your posting schedule. It takes a bit of time to get a workflow established. And you have to experiment at first to see what works for you. Then it’s getting the ‘muscle memory’ of your preferred process. Pretty soon though you’ll be banging vids out almost on autopilot.
And the mention of Sigma gives me an excuse to post this. As if Royal Armouries could be any cooler!
Thanks, Alan! I definitely need to streamline my workflow. Also I had to redo this one twice. But I’m getting more used to it and learning stuff with every video.
In short: Greek-Alphabet Wolf Pop-Sociology That Was Dubious From Its Inception And The Zoologist Who Invented It Now Regrets The Monster He Created: The Expansion Pack.
I kind of thought of the “Sigma” concept as being along the lines of “I want to be desired by women like an Alpha, but I don’t want to get into constant orgies like an Alpha because that’s degenerate and boring, so I’m going to be a superior non-Alpha Alpha which is ‘S-tier’ because that’s ‘Special’.” I mean, maybe I’m not quite saying that right, but there’s always been a whiff of “I’m just different” superiority about it.
I didn’t really pick up on any “introvert” vibes to it, but it would make a lot of sense if true.
@Snowberry:
Hunh. I probably should have realized that the idea of ‘Sigma’ as the super-Alpha came from gaming-style ‘S-tier ranking’, especially given the sorts of people pushing it, but it never actually occurred to me until you mentioned it.
(No, I haven’t watched the video yet, in the likely event that it’s mentioned there.)
@Jenora Feuer: It’s not, which is why I mentioned it. Incidentally, while I’m aware of the video game origins, I’m mostly familiar with the S-Tier concept from Anime/Manga.
Is anyone else getting worried about the election? Scandal after scandal, Trump increasingly incoherent, allegedly huge surges in Dem popularity and in Dem voter registrations, and yet 538 still gives Trump around a 40% chance of winning. WTF?
Why is Cloudflare blocking my access to FreeThoughtBlogs?
Still being blocked. And, of course, they’re blocking known proxies and Tor exits, too. So I’ve no apparent way of circumventing this, despite my innocence.
Fuck Cloudflare.
That monopoly needs to be brought to Lina Khan’s attention.
∑0•e^n is still 0.
It’s been 24 fucking hours. Why is Cloudflare still blocking my access to FreeThoughtBlogs?
How do I fix this? “Wait a few minutes/couple of hours” has been tried without success. Evidently I have to take some kind of action, not merely wait, to regain access, but what action? Cloudflare’s message doesn’t include any obvious avenue to appeal their decision. Why are they doing this to me and how to I force them to stop?
For what it’s worth, FTB has had this problem before and been offline for anything ranging from a day to a few days. In the past, it was problems with malicious copyright complaints. It’s not just you, it’s down for me and probably everyone else as well. Like this site, they don’t make much money on the blog, and don’t have a lot of resources to pour into IT. They’ve always figured it out in the past, and I’m sure they’ll figure this one out as well.
Yup, I can’t get on either.
Looking at the Cloudflare page it seems the problem is with FTB itself. The site is down. Hope it’s nothing too permanent. Need my Cripdyke fix.
A copyright complaint would take down an image or an article, not the whole site. And when exactly did Cloudflare appoint itself the copyright police? They should stay in their lane (DDoS protection) and leave copyright enforcement up to the courts, who are far better equipped to decide such things as fair use.
Regardless, it’s obviously not fixing itself and I still haven’t received any actionable information on what I need to do to get things back to normal. That is unacceptable to me. If something I use is broken I should either be empowered with the tools and information I need to fix it myself or someone else should fix it. Leaving a thing broken and not giving me the information to fix it myself when no-one else is willing to do so cannot be permitted. Someone must either fix it themselves or give me the ability to fix it. Instead, no one is doing either!
It’s back up.
@Alan Robertshaw: Crip Dyke hardly ever posts on Free Thought Blogs anymore, her current main blog is here: https://pervertjustice.substack.com/
Ah cheers for that Snowberry.
Crip Dyke is the best. I definitely recommend dropping by her substack.
For those who are curious, Cloudflare pops up on the screen telling you FTB is down, but it’s generally their own web hosting service that takes them offline. Once was a DMCA issue, as I mentioned, and another was an accusation that they were running a scam. They haven’t said exactly what happened this time, but Marcus and HJ Hornbeck have written about two of their previous shutdowns:
https://freethoughtblogs.com/reprobate/2024/03/11/lets-talk-websites/
https://freethoughtblogs.com/stderr/2023/10/05/a-weird-new-scam/#more-19512
There are probably more examples, but these are the two that I remembered people had blogged about in detail. TLDR, a couple of a-holes lodging frivolous complaints and a web host with bad customer service.
Of course, this got buried in the ensuing FTB mess. And meanwhile, why are (former?) members of this, of all sites, participating in the gentrification of the damn internet? We’ve usually been pretty good here about recognizing that intersectionality and inclusiveness applies to all axes of oppression, including the one called “class”. Participating in gentrification is participating in class-based exclusion and gets some automatic side-eye from me, and I’d like to think it’s not only because I have to subsist on less than $15,000 a year …
The disconnect between “Harris voter registrations are surging” and “Trump has a decent chance of winning” is easily explained by the electoral college; if it’s genuinely going to be as close as the pessimists predict, then only seven states (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin) are going to matter. Most of the new registrations are in States which Harris is already going to win, which means that if Trump does win, it will probably be with an even worse ratio of electoral-to-popular votes than he got in 2016. Yes, yes, everyone knows the electoral college needs to be fixed, but that’s not going to happen so long as both parties are locked in an existential conflict.
On the other hand, if the optimists are right, Harris will win all seven of those states, plus Ohio, New Hampshire, and Texas, and maybe even score an extra EC vote or two in Nebraska. Probably not Florida, though, despite it being a demographically easier target than Texas, because the State Government will do everything it can to make that not happen and the Supreme Court will just ignore it, as usual. But that alone would enough to seriously mess up the Republican Party to the point where they’d be forced to change course.
It’s hard to say whether the optimists or pessimists are closer to correct because there are multiple complications this time around which don’t happen in a normal election, some entirely new, and it’s hard to estimate how much any of them will matter. Hell, if Trump loses but not by nearly as much as the optimists hope, we still (probably) won’t have any idea if none of them made much difference or if some of them canceled out.
Hehehehehe … Texas? What universe are you from where Texas is in play? And is the portal still open so you can get back and bring me with you?
The world where genuinely pro-law-and-order conservative types (even if their particular concept of “law and order” is kind of terrible) end up with significantly depressed voter turnout due to Trump’s 34 guilty verdicts, perhaps? Granted, that would have been a much more likely prospect if the sentencing hadn’t been delayed until after the election because Judge Merchan didn’t want to be accused of election interference.
Giving a judgement on Trump’s case is not election interference. If you’re a criminal, you shouldn’t become president. It’s that simple.
@Surplus
Speaking as a Texan currently living in Texas, do your homework before you start jumping to conclusions about my state.
@ snowberry
I’m not sure how much of a factor that will actually be.
The common pattern is just for people to not accept the verdicts.
I’m just looking now at the fallout from Tina Peters sentencing. The comments are very much split on party lines. Democrats are going with FAFO. Republicans think she’s been stitched up.
Of course, no-one is obliged to agree with a verdict. Although there was an interesting paper that showed the more people had actually seen of a trial for themselves, the more likely they were to agree with the outcome.
The problem now though is that people just misrepresent what actually happened.
So yes, it is technically true that Alec Jones “wasn’t allowed to defend himself”. But that’s because he failed to file the necessary paperwork in time.
This is why I have now very much shifted my position and am now very keen on televising trials here. Although there is then the danger of ‘edited highlights’ not being representative.
We do now though allow televising of sentencing here. I feel that has been very useful in explaining to people the rationale behind particular sentences. That doesn’t stop accusations of ‘two tier justice’. But at least now you can say ‘did you even see what the judge said?’
So, for me, the issues in the US election will be, is there a middle ground of people who will be influenced by the convictions? And even if there is, will there be any objective reporting that they will have access to and might accept?
From across the pond it seems that US politics is just so tribal now that it’s more about identity that factualities. I don’t think this issue is solely the province of any part of the political spectrum. I see plenty of non acceptance of verdicts and misrepresentation of the proceedings from all sides.
So I’m not sure anything in the news has an influence on voting intentions. Although my view might be skewed just because media highlights the more extreme elements. Maybe people will make rational decisions based on actual policies?
@Alan
Over here there’s also the issue as to whether people are consuming trad media (newspapers, magazines, major TV options) versus “new media” (anything that only lives on the ‘net). Younger voters tend to favor new media, while older voters tend to favor trad media.