Alpha vs Alpha

How hierarchies are policed from the top

In which a reader recalls an SSH-related incident from high school:

I was sitting in the locker room after football practice my junior year in high school. I wasn’t really paying attention as we were all gassed and just getting our gear off. This was my second year in that city so I didn’t grow up with all the players but had gotten to know them and considered them all friends. All of a sudden a commotion breaks out right in front of me. A fellow junior and starting linebacker was getting hazed by three seniors. He fought them off viciously at first but then hit his head on the floor and then gave up. The seniors finished up the silly hazing ritual. Whatever the case, there was no way I was going to butt in. And then we all just carried on like nothing happened except for a slight unease amongst us mortals.

The first interesting part about this is that the leader of this particular hazing was, in hindsight, a pure alpha. Tall, muscular, handsome, extremely confident, a total badass on the field as the other starting linebacker, and obviously the lead captain of the team. The guy was a born leader. The other two, I think one was probably a bravo: brash and confident but nothing like the alpha, while the other was likely a delta. The alpha and bravo were also completely confident around women. The girls always reacted positively to the alpha which I found very curious having no clue about women at that age.

The second interesting part is that the junior linebacker was also an alpha. Less buff than the older one, but more handsome, and the girls also loved him. He became the lead captain of the team the following year to nobody’s surprise. Went on to captain a competitive world national team in another contact sport after a successful college football career. I never could understand his success with the girls either - but it was real and amazing.

The part that I don’t get is why did the older alpha go after the younger one? The younger one was clearly subordinate and inferior to the older one so I don’t think he was being put in his place - but who knows. If you find this anecdote interesting, I figure you would have some insight.

This incident is exactly the sort of instinctual Alpha conflict that I describe in SIGMA GAME. It’s the older lion making it clear to the younger lion that it isn’t his time yet. The reader probably wasn’t privy to whatever situation made the senior Alpha feel as if the junior Alpha had challenged him, but whatever it was clearly wasn’t serious enough to inspire a genuine fight, only a symbolic one.

The fact that the junior Alpha initially fought back suggests that there was, at some point, a challenge or an open demonstration of disrespect to which the reader was not privy. Generally speaking, when an Alpha wants to make an example, he will select a target who is of lesser value to the hierarchy, someone who is unlikely to put up more than a token resistance or be able to summon support from others in the hierarchy.

It’s also interesting that none of his allies rallied to the junior. This, too, tends to indicate that the junior had somehow, at some point, stepped out of line. It wasn’t necessarily anything related to the football team; it could have been something as simple as a public wisecrack or making a pass at the wrong girl.

But regardless, this sort of hierarchy policing by the Alpha and his Bravos is entirely normal and is of zero concern to everyone else, which is why the reader, who was apparently in a Delta role, did the correct thing by staying out of it and keeping his mouth shut.

I once inadvertently posed a challenge to the Alpha of our varsity soccer team by knocking him down during practice. Fortunately, the whole team recognized that I was simply defending myself and kept him away from me long enough for him to cool down, realize that I wasn’t challenging him, and for order to be restored. Two days later, he was literally standing over me and defending me from two opposing players with whom I’d been fighting, like a proper Alpha.