At 42 minutes, there's a remark that patrilineal lines rarely last beyond a couple of centuries, but matrilineal lines can last a thousand years or more.
I personally had been assuming that matrilineal lines tend to die out at the top due to hypergamy as the top men dip down into lower-status women, but the high-status women apparently keep their own lines going, possibly inadvertently and instinctively, by selecting lower-status Alphas, or at the very least, avoiding high-status Gammas. One of the commenters then makes a crack about the Bene Gesserit.
TL;DR: High-status women select Alphas and avoid Gammas, and manage to keep the matrilineal lines going far longer than the men are able to keep wealth in the family / patrilineal lines.
Before I knew about the SSH, I helped interview a guy who gave all the right answers on paper, but gave me a bit of a vibe. The moment he was hired, I and the other receptionist began noticing how much we instinctually disliked him even though he'd done nothing. We called him an energy vampire because it was so exhausting being on guard when he was around. Once or twice I was handing him receipts, and he kept trying to touch my hand (in a very subtle way that would have been deniable had I called him out, which I should have.)
The "he's just exhausting to be around" Hypergamouse episode is based on that guy.
He also made a comment about a coworkers butt which made everyone feel awkward, and he'd make decisions above his pay grade without consulting his superiors. Everything was subtle, but the awkwardness and ick added up to the point where all the girls felt uncomfortable. Once I learned the term gamma it was an instant click.
I made the mistake of being kind to a gamma at work once. This somehow snowballed into him trying to gift me all of his X-Files memorabilia, hypothetical questions of if I would date him if I left my husband, and finally him dm-ing me hentai porn. He eventually had a meltdown duing a company meeting and was fired. I really wish I knew then what I know now. It was one of the most bizarre, creepy interactions I've ever had.
100% It didn't help that my parents raised me to think all people were inherently kind and would take the same care with you as you would them. It really bit me in the ass as I became an adult because it's so ridiculously untrue.
My daughters could peg gammas from even a very young age. I realized this when, several years ago, my young elementary-aged daughter called her friend's father a "blobby man".
Recently said goodbye to a gamma at my workplace. Dude had a real problem with authority. He argued with our bosses multiple times, and when I tried to set him straight he complained about being "treated like a kid." The last straw was when he accidentally left a mic on while making fun of two of our customers, right after he cheerfully told our manager, "oh, I'm not doing that, that's all you, man!" On the way out he was completely sour grapes, saying he didn't even want the job. I wasn't sad to see him go; he once called me racist for saying an Arabic family might be solving one of our games the wrong way, and apparently he hated working with me but wouldn't say it to my face.
Agreed. As the workplace becomes more feminized, that is to say built for and rewarding of female styles of interaction, gammas have more and more success getting in and climbing through the ranks due to what you mentioned.
I agree and I speak from my own experiences when I have had those wall of text moments. I'm smarter than average but the emotions have at times taken over. Thankfully my delta and omega qualities far outshine that stupidity.
I remember the very first time I was on an interview panel, we had two top applicants for an HR Assistant Position. One was a man who on paper was over qualified, a lawyer, and gave textbook answers. The other was a very average woman exactly who you expect for an HR Assistant with a decade of HR experience. I voted for the man and the women voted for the woman, so we hired her.
When I asked why, she listed off a list of qualities he exhibited during the interview that were all classic Gamma. Finally said, there’s something off about that guy. Now that I know about the SSH, I know those women saved me from a hiring decision I would have regretted, and maybe a full meltdown.
So there’s one use for women in the workplace. Put one on your interview panels to detect Gammas and Omegas.
It would have been interesting in a way if the first son had not been killed right away, he gave away alpha asshole vibes in what little was shown. Lot of SSH in that show.
Agreed, Man, we would definitely have seen alpha vibes from that one. He was just like his Dad. I really am thankful for our SDL's taxonomy. It enhances my enjoyment of the shows, especially everything Taylor Sheridan writes, Vince Gilligan and a few others. Wife called me out and gave me the nickname Rip for awhile.
If Sheridan had done us a fav and not self inserted himself or had the hot chick doing the crying Indian act the show would have been a notch better. The last season was blasted as woke, but in reality the Duttons just ran out of asshole alpha energy and got the best deal they could get. So SSH for the win. And Wolf man the actor shot himself in the foot and became a joke and made his show death the best possible course of action for Sheridan and IMO it worked.
You could not be more wrong. The scene when Beth goes to enlist Travis's help for the auction is one of the best ones in the entire series.
That's proper Alpha energy. Also, every scene with Travis and Jimmy is fantastic.
"Jimmy, why are you even here? Why don't you go train dogs or something?"
Notice how despite all that, as the Alpha, he protects his Delta's dignity when he tells Jimmy about Dutton's death and pretends not to notice that Jimmy starts crying and makes a comment about how the arena dust can get in your eyes.
Absolutely. Unfortunately secretaries go with the position. Having a gamma boss is hell for them. Had a new gamma boss. My secretary was friends with his. So my secretary was fantastic working with his secretary for make sure my meetings with him were always scheduled when he was in a good or disinterested mode. Learned more about him than I ever wanted to know; his divorce, his new car and home, his kid getting arrested for stealing a car. They helped me avoid his notorious micromanagement gamma rages that others were subjected to. I was an excellent team player according to him. I give full credit to the ladies for steering my schedule for smooth sailing.
Please correct me if I’m wrong, but one aspect of the SSH I haven’t seen articulated is the intersection between Gammas and Deltas. My interpretation (both in terms of the model and IRL) is that they overlap/are adjacent so, ignoring situational status and controlling for other factors, a “High Gamma” will ‘outrank’ a “Low Delta” and vice versa. Is that how you see it?
No, you have it exactly wrong. A Low Delta outranks a High Gamma. High, Middle, and Low are just gradations of the rank.
Consider John Scalzi. He's a high Gamma. Moderately famous, married, and wealthy. Successful in his field. How would the women in your life rate him against the average Deltas you know?
Ugh. Good God. The SDL can certainly paint a picture that makes me shiver in disgust in empathic sympathy with the women I know having to consider the prospect of getting into a sexual relationship with Scalzi. Excuse me while I try to hold the breakfast down.
My observation is that mid to high Deltas outrank Gammas but at the lower end there is some considerable overlap. I base this on my observation of lower status men engaging in lower status hobbies such as tabletop wargaming - which attracts a high proportion of Gammas, nerdy Deltas and Omegas. Granted those Deltas will generally have a higher than typical prevalence of Gamma traits but they are still Deltas (nerd vs geek is good shorthand for cerebral Delta vs Gamma).
And outside of that environment, there are many unimpressive lower status men who are not Gammas or Omegas so are Deltas by default.
Having boardgamed weekly pre-covid for at least a decade, I can pretty definitively say there was no gamma/delta overlap as far as I ever saw.
The deltas were so delta that they couldn’t even behave like a gamma even if throwing fits, playing victim or shamelessly trying to take back moves would’ve meant winning the game.
Even the most mundane, obscure, low CPU consumption, background daemon on a Unix or Linux system outranks within the scheduler every single user process on the system.
There is no overlap at all. A low delta might be negative, physically unattractive, lazy, boring, conflict avoidant, but he is not subversively disruptive in the way a gamma is. It's like comparing mild food poisoning to cancer.
This is exactly it. There are plenty of surface level traits that can overlap, but gammas have a hatred for the status quo that deltas do not. A nerdy loser delta is not the same as a nerdy loser gamma.
You're still wrong. And we all know why you're attempting to redefine some Gammas as being higher status than they are. You're not the first. You won't be the last.
There is always situational overlap across all ranks. An Omega can be a CEO. That's irrelevant.
Remember that part about how motivations are always more transparent than people want to believe? That applies here.
Double down on the corrector being wrong, using the logic literally referred to in the article.
Very often, conversations with Gammas who "are right" generate in me the same feeling as conversations with toddlers who "want candy". It's amusing and exhausting simultaneously. The difference being that the toddler with his worst tantrum does not present physical danger to me as an adult woman.
This is a brilliant observation. Much like those who are "just asking questions" and are "genuinely curious", these are fig-leaves that cowards use to avoid accountability. We would respect magi83 if he actually accepted the correction with a modicum of humility, but if that was possible he wouldn't be a Gamma in the first place, n'est-ce pas?
No. Delta is a man invited to team sports. Delta is normal and decent. Deltas are practical. Deltas are good. And deltas like sports. The good, average 'straight man', he is delta or above. A good school or society is full of deltas having a decent time. A city without too few deltas performing decently, that's a shitty, low-class city you want to get out of yesterday.
Gamma is an anorectic or incredibly fat, annoying, high-IQ nerd who has some psychological malfunction that he questions sports. And questioning sports is a major red flag in men.
Deltas occupy a wide spectrum of the male population so there is a lot variance. Characteristics that are generally consistent across Deltas are a narrow focus of interests and a tendency to stay in their lane (which taken to its extreme manifests in Delta narcissism).
I've met plenty of fat deltas, but they still like sports. Even if they've never played, they'll have $50 in a fantasy football league or sing all the club songs while watching a Chelsea FC game.
Even the nerdy deltas like sports. It'll be some random sport, but it's still a sport that requires practicing physical skills.
My wife has a fantastic gamma radar. Unfortunately her dad is a gamma and a boomer so she can't help but be disgusted by him. I think growing up around him is one of the reasons her gamma radar is so good.
The Gamma label is the most useful part of the SSH. I don't like to call someone a creep, weirdo, incel without good reason, on the other hand Gamma is perfectly descriptive if you know the SSH. It says so much about the man, whether you're concerned with his work ethics, dating or social life.
It single-handedly explained to me the tension and dislike between my father-in-law, my brother-in-law, my brother and my husband (Sigma). Now I mostly use the Gamma radar to predict who will hate my husband - because it's inevitable - so we can stay away from him. But it will also be VERY useful in vetting future sons-in-laws.
This is as close as you get to prophecy in ordinary life. I had a girl identifying a gamma in about 10 seconds in. It took 6 months for her to be proven right. I still have his creepy texts she send me on my phone somewhere. Somehow I ended up main character.
I thought this was an interesting stream. The transcript starts to get interesting around 39 minutes in.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDa3EYjRuu0
At 42 minutes, there's a remark that patrilineal lines rarely last beyond a couple of centuries, but matrilineal lines can last a thousand years or more.
I personally had been assuming that matrilineal lines tend to die out at the top due to hypergamy as the top men dip down into lower-status women, but the high-status women apparently keep their own lines going, possibly inadvertently and instinctively, by selecting lower-status Alphas, or at the very least, avoiding high-status Gammas. One of the commenters then makes a crack about the Bene Gesserit.
TL;DR: High-status women select Alphas and avoid Gammas, and manage to keep the matrilineal lines going far longer than the men are able to keep wealth in the family / patrilineal lines.
Before I knew about the SSH, I helped interview a guy who gave all the right answers on paper, but gave me a bit of a vibe. The moment he was hired, I and the other receptionist began noticing how much we instinctually disliked him even though he'd done nothing. We called him an energy vampire because it was so exhausting being on guard when he was around. Once or twice I was handing him receipts, and he kept trying to touch my hand (in a very subtle way that would have been deniable had I called him out, which I should have.)
The "he's just exhausting to be around" Hypergamouse episode is based on that guy.
He also made a comment about a coworkers butt which made everyone feel awkward, and he'd make decisions above his pay grade without consulting his superiors. Everything was subtle, but the awkwardness and ick added up to the point where all the girls felt uncomfortable. Once I learned the term gamma it was an instant click.
I made the mistake of being kind to a gamma at work once. This somehow snowballed into him trying to gift me all of his X-Files memorabilia, hypothetical questions of if I would date him if I left my husband, and finally him dm-ing me hentai porn. He eventually had a meltdown duing a company meeting and was fired. I really wish I knew then what I know now. It was one of the most bizarre, creepy interactions I've ever had.
This is exactly the reason attractive women can't be kind.
100% It didn't help that my parents raised me to think all people were inherently kind and would take the same care with you as you would them. It really bit me in the ass as I became an adult because it's so ridiculously untrue.
Don't be too hard on them. We're in a phase now when it's getting worse.
9 times out of 10 the gammas I've identified over the past few years have flamed out, one with the police involved.
The eventual gamma creep is as reliable as death and taxes.
My daughters could peg gammas from even a very young age. I realized this when, several years ago, my young elementary-aged daughter called her friend's father a "blobby man".
Recently said goodbye to a gamma at my workplace. Dude had a real problem with authority. He argued with our bosses multiple times, and when I tried to set him straight he complained about being "treated like a kid." The last straw was when he accidentally left a mic on while making fun of two of our customers, right after he cheerfully told our manager, "oh, I'm not doing that, that's all you, man!" On the way out he was completely sour grapes, saying he didn't even want the job. I wasn't sad to see him go; he once called me racist for saying an Arabic family might be solving one of our games the wrong way, and apparently he hated working with me but wouldn't say it to my face.
“Works at a coffee shop” was your first clue.
I think Gammas and women kinda use the same techniques, thats why they are so good at spotting them.
Mainly word and emotionell manipulation
Agreed. As the workplace becomes more feminized, that is to say built for and rewarding of female styles of interaction, gammas have more and more success getting in and climbing through the ranks due to what you mentioned.
I agree and I speak from my own experiences when I have had those wall of text moments. I'm smarter than average but the emotions have at times taken over. Thankfully my delta and omega qualities far outshine that stupidity.
Yeah, we all been there, best thing is to remaim calm no matter what situation
I remember the very first time I was on an interview panel, we had two top applicants for an HR Assistant Position. One was a man who on paper was over qualified, a lawyer, and gave textbook answers. The other was a very average woman exactly who you expect for an HR Assistant with a decade of HR experience. I voted for the man and the women voted for the woman, so we hired her.
When I asked why, she listed off a list of qualities he exhibited during the interview that were all classic Gamma. Finally said, there’s something off about that guy. Now that I know about the SSH, I know those women saved me from a hiring decision I would have regretted, and maybe a full meltdown.
So there’s one use for women in the workplace. Put one on your interview panels to detect Gammas and Omegas.
Yeah. A gamma who's also a lawyer would have been very dangerous to have on staff ... dangerous to good employees, and dangerous to the company.
And an awful lot of lawyers seem to be gammas.
Weaponizing rules beyond their intent is a Gamma tell
It would be interesting to know which ranks tend to which professions.
Yeah. What you said just reminded me of the Jamie character in Yellowstone. Taylor Sheridan has a knack for writing characters of each SSH type.
It would have been interesting in a way if the first son had not been killed right away, he gave away alpha asshole vibes in what little was shown. Lot of SSH in that show.
Agreed, Man, we would definitely have seen alpha vibes from that one. He was just like his Dad. I really am thankful for our SDL's taxonomy. It enhances my enjoyment of the shows, especially everything Taylor Sheridan writes, Vince Gilligan and a few others. Wife called me out and gave me the nickname Rip for awhile.
If Sheridan had done us a fav and not self inserted himself or had the hot chick doing the crying Indian act the show would have been a notch better. The last season was blasted as woke, but in reality the Duttons just ran out of asshole alpha energy and got the best deal they could get. So SSH for the win. And Wolf man the actor shot himself in the foot and became a joke and made his show death the best possible course of action for Sheridan and IMO it worked.
You could not be more wrong. The scene when Beth goes to enlist Travis's help for the auction is one of the best ones in the entire series.
That's proper Alpha energy. Also, every scene with Travis and Jimmy is fantastic.
"Jimmy, why are you even here? Why don't you go train dogs or something?"
Notice how despite all that, as the Alpha, he protects his Delta's dignity when he tells Jimmy about Dutton's death and pretends not to notice that Jimmy starts crying and makes a comment about how the arena dust can get in your eyes.
Why would an overqualified lawyer apply for an HR assistant position?
First, because he failed at being a lawyer. Second, he failed at getting anything else.
The women were spot on.
I think a secretary position is a very feminine job for a woman to have and she can discretely screen for Gammas.
Absolutely. Unfortunately secretaries go with the position. Having a gamma boss is hell for them. Had a new gamma boss. My secretary was friends with his. So my secretary was fantastic working with his secretary for make sure my meetings with him were always scheduled when he was in a good or disinterested mode. Learned more about him than I ever wanted to know; his divorce, his new car and home, his kid getting arrested for stealing a car. They helped me avoid his notorious micromanagement gamma rages that others were subjected to. I was an excellent team player according to him. I give full credit to the ladies for steering my schedule for smooth sailing.
> Everything is a test
-- Walter Burke, The Recruit (2003)
Any company worth its salt will have a savvy receptionist as a first screen
Please correct me if I’m wrong, but one aspect of the SSH I haven’t seen articulated is the intersection between Gammas and Deltas. My interpretation (both in terms of the model and IRL) is that they overlap/are adjacent so, ignoring situational status and controlling for other factors, a “High Gamma” will ‘outrank’ a “Low Delta” and vice versa. Is that how you see it?
No, you have it exactly wrong. A Low Delta outranks a High Gamma. High, Middle, and Low are just gradations of the rank.
Consider John Scalzi. He's a high Gamma. Moderately famous, married, and wealthy. Successful in his field. How would the women in your life rate him against the average Deltas you know?
Ugh. Good God. The SDL can certainly paint a picture that makes me shiver in disgust in empathic sympathy with the women I know having to consider the prospect of getting into a sexual relationship with Scalzi. Excuse me while I try to hold the breakfast down.
My observation is that mid to high Deltas outrank Gammas but at the lower end there is some considerable overlap. I base this on my observation of lower status men engaging in lower status hobbies such as tabletop wargaming - which attracts a high proportion of Gammas, nerdy Deltas and Omegas. Granted those Deltas will generally have a higher than typical prevalence of Gamma traits but they are still Deltas (nerd vs geek is good shorthand for cerebral Delta vs Gamma).
And outside of that environment, there are many unimpressive lower status men who are not Gammas or Omegas so are Deltas by default.
Having boardgamed weekly pre-covid for at least a decade, I can pretty definitively say there was no gamma/delta overlap as far as I ever saw.
The deltas were so delta that they couldn’t even behave like a gamma even if throwing fits, playing victim or shamelessly trying to take back moves would’ve meant winning the game.
A low grade capable guy will always beat a high grade conflict avoidant, passive aggressive guy.
Here's an analogy:
Even the most mundane, obscure, low CPU consumption, background daemon on a Unix or Linux system outranks within the scheduler every single user process on the system.
There is no overlap at all. A low delta might be negative, physically unattractive, lazy, boring, conflict avoidant, but he is not subversively disruptive in the way a gamma is. It's like comparing mild food poisoning to cancer.
This is exactly it. There are plenty of surface level traits that can overlap, but gammas have a hatred for the status quo that deltas do not. A nerdy loser delta is not the same as a nerdy loser gamma.
You're still wrong. And we all know why you're attempting to redefine some Gammas as being higher status than they are. You're not the first. You won't be the last.
There is always situational overlap across all ranks. An Omega can be a CEO. That's irrelevant.
Remember that part about how motivations are always more transparent than people want to believe? That applies here.
Start with "correct me if I'm wrong"...
Be corrected...
Double down on the corrector being wrong, using the logic literally referred to in the article.
Very often, conversations with Gammas who "are right" generate in me the same feeling as conversations with toddlers who "want candy". It's amusing and exhausting simultaneously. The difference being that the toddler with his worst tantrum does not present physical danger to me as an adult woman.
> Start with "correct me if I'm wrong"...
This is a brilliant observation. Much like those who are "just asking questions" and are "genuinely curious", these are fig-leaves that cowards use to avoid accountability. We would respect magi83 if he actually accepted the correction with a modicum of humility, but if that was possible he wouldn't be a Gamma in the first place, n'est-ce pas?
Yes, SSH rank is as SSH rank does.
I’m more Delta so I don’t think I’m engaging in self flattery but thanks for clarifying your view on my original question.
No, really. Take what you've been told about yourself and learn from it.
No. Delta is a man invited to team sports. Delta is normal and decent. Deltas are practical. Deltas are good. And deltas like sports. The good, average 'straight man', he is delta or above. A good school or society is full of deltas having a decent time. A city without too few deltas performing decently, that's a shitty, low-class city you want to get out of yesterday.
Gamma is an anorectic or incredibly fat, annoying, high-IQ nerd who has some psychological malfunction that he questions sports. And questioning sports is a major red flag in men.
Deltas occupy a wide spectrum of the male population so there is a lot variance. Characteristics that are generally consistent across Deltas are a narrow focus of interests and a tendency to stay in their lane (which taken to its extreme manifests in Delta narcissism).
I've met plenty of fat deltas, but they still like sports. Even if they've never played, they'll have $50 in a fantasy football league or sing all the club songs while watching a Chelsea FC game.
Even the nerdy deltas like sports. It'll be some random sport, but it's still a sport that requires practicing physical skills.
No.
My wife has a fantastic gamma radar. Unfortunately her dad is a gamma and a boomer so she can't help but be disgusted by him. I think growing up around him is one of the reasons her gamma radar is so good.
Please tell us more about your relationship with your father-in-law
The Gamma label is the most useful part of the SSH. I don't like to call someone a creep, weirdo, incel without good reason, on the other hand Gamma is perfectly descriptive if you know the SSH. It says so much about the man, whether you're concerned with his work ethics, dating or social life.
Yes, the predictive quality is terribly useful. Often you can identify a gamma long before he exposes himself to be a creep.
It single-handedly explained to me the tension and dislike between my father-in-law, my brother-in-law, my brother and my husband (Sigma). Now I mostly use the Gamma radar to predict who will hate my husband - because it's inevitable - so we can stay away from him. But it will also be VERY useful in vetting future sons-in-laws.
Probability is built into reality itself. Hence the Book of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes.
And Book of Job disproving an entirely deterministic universe.
The only full determinism is the afterlife or likely the Spirit realm. But matter seems to have this feature.
My sister always used to refer to a certain type of man as “gnome”.
This is as close as you get to prophecy in ordinary life. I had a girl identifying a gamma in about 10 seconds in. It took 6 months for her to be proven right. I still have his creepy texts she send me on my phone somewhere. Somehow I ended up main character.
Best thumbnail ever, btw. When he did his gamma things, that's exactly the look she would shoot my way.