Alphas are not orcs

While I tend to roll my eyes at alphas and their burning need to have their social superiority recognized, I don't see any reason to falsely denigrate them. They may not be the brightest collection of men on the planet, but neither are they orcs. They don't have green skin and they most certainly don't ride warpigs. In light of that, I never cease to find it amusing how men who are new to the theory of Game and don't know the first thing about it are so prone to triumphantly declare themselves an alpha... or even "a natural alpha". This post by Eric Raymond, entitled "A natural contemplates game" is a spectacularly amusing example of the genre:

I’m what PUAs call a “natural”, a man who figured out much of game on his own and consequently cuts a wide sexual swathe when he cares to. Not quite the same game they’re playing, however. For one thing, I’ve never tried to pick up a woman in a bar in my entire life. College parties when I was a student, yes; SF conventions, neopagan festivals, SCA events, yes; bars, no.

Also, and partly as consequence of where I hang out, it has been quite unusual for me to hit on women with IQs below about 120 – and it may well be the case that I’ve never tried to interest a woman with below-average intelligence. (Er, which is not to say they don’t notice me; even in middle age I get lots of IOIs from waitresses and other female service personnel. Any PUA would tell you this is a predictable and unremarkable consequence of being an alpha male.)

Because the women the PUAs are after aren’t the kind that interest me, much of “game” as described in the PUA culture fills me with a mix of recognition and revulsion.

Sure they don't, you precious alpha snowflake. But it is true that Raymond is not playing the same game, in fact, it is eminently clear that he doesn't understand Game at all. What he clearly fails to realize that the kind of women pursued by pick-up artists are slender, pretty women, the most attractive women, which is not exactly the sort of woman one tends to encounter at "SF conventions" or "neopagan festivals", much less "SCA events". I am a published science fiction writer, a life member of the Science Fiction Writers Association, and I can tell you from experience that while the average woman who attends SF conventions may well have an IQ north of 120, she is also likely to have a weight north of 180 to go with it. There is nothing wrong with this. Large girls need love too. But the fact is that it isn't the socially dominant, sexually successful alphas who are providing it to them.

But it wasn't necessary to know where Raymond is rooting around for women to know that he is no alpha, not when there is such a distinct stink of delta/gamma delusion that belies his reported swath-cutting. The reason that much of Game fills this self-styled "natural alpha" with revulsion is because, far from being any such thing, he is a fairly typical delta with a few gamma tendencies who is given to placing women on pedestals. His deltatude explains why he won't hit on women he deems insufficiently intelligent and why he finds himself fundamentally disgusted by the "thought of flinging negs to score sex". It's why he qualifies his wide sexual swathery. And it's also why he doesn't need to be an asshole - my dear snowflake, real natural alphas most certainly are NOT faking it - for the obvious reason that the smart, overweight, 4-5s with whom he is achieving success with his nice guy, kino-rich anti-Game don't require it. This has all been explained, in no little detail, by the Dark Lord of the Crimson Arts over at the Chateau.

The main thing that Raymond has failed to understand is that quality is every bit as significant an aspect of socio-sexual status as quantity. Brad Pitt scores far more status from being with one highly desirable bitch like Angelina Jolie than he would by scoring with ten thousand nice, smart, mediocrities. Raymond shows his gamma side when he defensively feigns disinterest in the sub-120 IQ women who are out of his league; notice how he assigns positive value to some of the very attributes that actually detract from a woman's sexual market value. This, too, is entirely typical.

Still, it must be said that Raymond makes a cogent point when he points out that until most women stop ignoring nice, well-behaved deltas and gammas and rewarding the socially dominant alphas with sex, nothing will change. This is not news to anyone who has read much Roissy, of course, but it does prove that Raymond isn't actually unintelligent or deluded, he is merely ignorant of the actual specifics of Game. If he ever bothers to learn it and put it into practice, I see no reason he won't be able to put the clever warpigs to pasture and move up from self-appointed "natural alpha" to solid beta status. On the other hand, if he prefers to enjoy life as an alpha of the geeks and freaks convention circuit, who is to gainsay him?