Alpha Graciousness

Television and the movies lied to you

One thing that most people fail to recognize is the tremendous effect that their unquestioned assumptions have been literally programmed into them by the movies and television programming they have consumed over a period of decades. One such programmed assumption is the trope recognized as the Jerk Jock.

"In 80s teen movies, if a character is sporting a letter jacket, it might as well be the letter swastika, because he is going to be committing crimes against humanity."

— Cracked, "5 Horrible Life Lessons Learned from Teen Movies"

See that tall, hunky and vulgar blond guy in the football letterman jacket picking on the nerd over there? What's his name, Dick? Jason? Kyle? Tyler? One of those? That's him. One in every school.

The Spear Counterpart to the Alpha Bitch (and sometimes the Cruel Cheerleader), the Jerk Jock is the Chief Bully who dominates the school/college environment through physical violence and threats of brutal retaliation. A boorish, obnoxious, spiteful asshole with an out-of-control sense of entitlement, he spends his time beating people up, getting drunk and destroying property; and in darker works, he may also be an incorrigible rapist.

Of course, most of that doesn't matter to the student body. Oftentimes, the Jerk Jock is the reigning king of the campus, with many people wanting to be his friend or his date, or at least be on his good side (although if his family is rich then he might have paid them to do so). His bullying ways don't make him a pariah, but a prince, because as everyone in High School knows, anyone who's popular is a bully.

Just as the Alpha Bitch has a Girl Posse, the Jerk Jock has the Gang of Bullies, a crowd of hangers-on who bow to his every whim and help him victimize whomever he decides to pick on. And he inevitably decides that Our Heroes are his favorite targets.

Of course, we know that this is a false myth perpetrated by the Secret Kings who dominate Hollywood, who have less athletic ability than the average rock, and whose hatred for good-looking young men with chiseled features and blond hair is only exceeded by their envy. It’s just unmitigated and unjustified pure Gamma hate for Alphas.

The ultimate evil, if the Hollywood Gammas are to be believed. The funny thing about this picture is that I went to school with a big blond guy who won the state downhill skiing championship, and not one, but two very pretty redhead cheerleaders.

But it’s entirely false. Because Alphas are empathetic and accustomed to looking out for others in their hierarchy, they actually tend to be kinder on average than most people. When I was in eighth grade, I committed the faux pas of inviting one of my teammates, the Alpha goalie of my school soccer team, to spend the night. It was soon clear that we had nothing in common other than soccer and he was totally mystified by my interests in books, computers, and wargames, but not only did he refrain from making fun of me the next week at school as I’d half-expected, but he even told everyone that he’d been at my house and that I was “all right”.

Which, frankly, was a very generous way of putting it. Remember, this was 1982 and no one had computers in their homes at that time and few junior high school kids really even knew what they were. So you can imagine what a cool Alpha jock given a detailed demonstration of Visicalc, the first spreadsheet software, would have made of the experience. I never forgot his kindness and I never made that mistake again. Learning to stay in your social lane is as important as learning to stay in your sexual lane.

Soccer cheerleaders in 1985. One of the aforementioned redheads is on the far right.