On so-called “green-text stories” on 4chan, users ironically mocked men as alpha as fuck in fictional accounts of men trying to be manly but failing spectacularly.Įlsewhere in the dark, masculinist corners of the internet, soyboys and cucks, derogatory slang for effeminate men, usually perceived as liberals, were called beta male (submissive, sexually weak, with beta the second letter of the Greek alphabet). The manosphere also calls these alphas bluepilled normalfags. The alpha male is that type: admired in the suave cool of James Bond, parodied in the manic Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale) in the 2000 film American Psycho, feared in Daniel Day Lewis as Daniel Plainview in the 2007 There Will Be Blood, far-too-fawned-over in Brad Pitt’s Tyler Durden in the 1999 bro-classic Fight Club, and loved-and-hated in John Hamm’s Don Draper from the Mad Men TV series in the 2000s.īy the 2010s, the sense of alpha showed some narrowing on the internet, shifting from a male who achieved success and status in general to a male who could easily get a lot of girls in bed or who liked sports and was bro-ish.

Alpha is the first letter in the Greek alphabet, its privileged position lending itself as a metaphor for primacy or superiority since at least the 1300s in English.īy the 1870s, scientists were using the term alpha male to refer to the most dominant male animal in a group-like an alpha wolf, who achieves top-dog status through aggressive behavior. By the 1970s, scientists extended alpha to human behavior, describing men who, through various forms of social power, acquire wealth, prestige, sexual partners, and other resources valued by their peers.

Alpha & omega series