If you pay attention to recent media and entertainment, you’ve probably seen the term “alpha male”. “Alpha male”, according to many pick-up artist forums, means a guy who’s successful, charismatic, confident, and gets a lot of sex. The thing is, people who identify as “alpha males” in reality don’t actually exhibit those traits.

The origin of “alpha” as a concept is from The Wolf: Ecology and Behavior of an Endangered Species, a book by David Mech published in 1970, based on an outdated 1947 study on wolves in captivity, which noticed that wolf males compete with each other for dominance over the pack and potential mates.

However, “alpha” wasn’t really applied to human behaviour until the 1982 book Chimpanzee Politics: Power and Sex Among Apes, where author Frans de Waal, primatologist and ethologist, theorised his observations on chimps can be applied to humans.

Former pick-up artist Neil Strauss further popularised “alpha male” as a concept all men should strive for in his 2005 book The Game, because “alphas”, pick up artists claim, get more women to sleep with them.

“Alpha males” don’t exist

Subscribers to the “alpha male” theory however, seem to ignore the fact that both Mech and Strauss have since tried to explain how their conclusions on wolves and pick-up artistry respectively, are wrong.

In fact, Strauss in The Game, the same book that popularised the concept, eventually comes to the conclusion that a life of nothing but trying to get women to sleep with you is “for losers”, and the way to win the game was to leave it.

Ten years after the publishing of The Game, Strauss published another book The Truth: An Uncomfortable Book About Relationships, which documents his journey recovering from his time as a pick-up artist through therapy, introspection, and his search of a real relationship focused on more than just sex.

David Mech has also tried to let the world know that the term “alpha” is not accurate even when describing naturally-occuring wolf packs. His book published in 1970, which was at least partially responsible for popularising the concept of alpha wolves, is no longer in print as of 2022.

The problem with “alpha male” ideology

The problem with “alpha males”, and the worldview that underpins that idea, is that it is not just wrong. While some advice on how to be an alpha male genuinely tries to help men be better and more confident, a large part of it is just toxic masculinity.

Toxic masculinity is the kind of attitude that builds off stereotypes of “manly men”. These stereotypes include tropes like men should be violence, repress their feelings, and be aggressively assertive in social interactions. Not only is this set of stereotypes dangerous and buffoonish, but it’s also detrimental to emotional development.

Too much of “alpha male” rhetoric is used in concepts such as neomasculinity, in which Daryush “Roosh V” Valizadeh, another well-known pick-up artist, advocates a return to a more “natural,” patriarchal, and non-queer society. (Just like the ancient Greeks and Romans were famously known for.) As of 2019, Roosh V has gone through some introspection and decided to leave the pick-up artist community (and take down his website) and devote himself to Christianity.

In conclusion, the concept of “alpha” barely applies to wolves and definitely should not be applied to humans. Not only has it been thoroughly disproved, pick-up artistry, which popularised (and still uses) the concept of “alpha males”, is so ineffective at giving practitioners a fulfilling life that two of the arguably most influential (former) pick-up artists have given up on their previous lifestyle to look for happiness elsewhere.

Neomasculinity, “alpha male-ism”, and other similar concepts promote silly and toxic behaviour in a desire for men to act more “manly”, fight back against the homosexual agenda, or get more sex. Attempting to use “alpha male” rhetoric to improve oneself is an exercise in frustration and men and boys should stop looking at life through this ugly lens.