It's been a long process working through my negative fundamental cycles, but this is completely true.
Quality of friends/women I date has increased dramatically the more cycles I break. Simple correlation. Reality is the complete opposite from the Hollywood sperg fantasy world pushed on us.
You put out excellent, succinct writing. This blog has been a game changer personally. Thanks Vox.
Ive done this in the past. Gamma behavior confirmed.
Off topic. I think Dave smith would be a good person to introduce the ssh too and promote it. I enjoy his podcast. He is a truth seeking individual. He would be curious about how the term sigma came about. I apologize if this comment was not helpful
I have a different perspective on this issue. I came from third-world country and broken family background. My parents are very low on SSH (My dad was a factory worker, my mom never finished college). Against odds, somehow I was able to build my competence, studied very hard and eventually studied in good university.
After some reflection when socializing with my college friends (most of whom from very well-off background, parents worked in multinational companies, owned big business, or have substantial investment portfolios), I acknowledged that most of them have vision to build so-called empire, and capability to realize it.
However, I realized that if I cannot use the outcome of their life to define what is successful for me as their life were much different than me. I also observed that somehow the higher the stature of your circle, the lifestyle become more competitive and opportunistic
I realized that the opposite side of the spectrum also not healthy. Average joe also does not even want to hold themselves to any standard (loser, if you want to call them), but I found that to befriend people with average status can provide you with a sense of openness and friendliness (instead of worrying of being judged all the times).
This was a painful but necessary aspect of sorting my life out. Men you've treated like brothers can throw the biggest baby bitch Gamma meltdown the moment some posituve change in your life causes them some minute strife, real or perceived.
I was fortunate enough to end up making a few friends who were wiser and either higher-status or exceptional as Deltas. A lot of men really just need to have some positive encouragement without getting bogged down in coulda, shoulda, woulda.
At the beginning of the Pandemic, one of our friends (Bravo) began really growing his automotive repair business and it couldn’t have worked out for a better dude.
Even though none of us said anything to each other, everyone significantly leveled up within the next two or three years.
I’m guessing we all intrinsically new that what Vox said in this post is correct. If we didn’t level up with him, our Bravo friend would likely have found himself in a close circle of friends that didn’t include us.
The whole friend group is better because of the Bravo’s success and fortunately none of us turned out to be crabs.
Luke 16:9: (NEB 1970) "'So I say to you, use your worldly wealth to win friends for yourselves, so that when money is a thing of the past you may be received into an eternal home."
Luke 16:11 (NEB 1970): "If, then, you have not proved trustworthy with the wealth of this world, who will trust you with the wealth that is real?"
When men who are lower social status decide to self improve to move up the social totem pole, one of the things that shocks them is how much nicer to them the Chads are. In high school when some nerdy guy decides to take weights class, it's very eye opening to see that the Chads in the class are instantly supportive of the newbie.
Most low social status people are constantly trying to hold each other down and stabbing each other in the back. It's exhausting. However, the higher status young men have other stuff going on in their lives, like after school sports, jobs, or trying to go out with some pretty girl and they don't have time to be mean to the people lower than them on the social totem pole.
One of the most painful truths of life is people who are lower on the social totem pole, on average, tend to be meaner and nastier than people higher on the social totem pole. It's the 180 degree opposite of how Hollywood portrays the high school social scene.
If you've got something psychological that messes with your basic social skills, then you're often bullied and left without invitations to social things. At least when you're a teenager. If you're angry or frustrated because of that, you have to get over that. If you're not, you've not improved yet. That anger about how it's unfair disappears when you get it.
People become angry and violent when the rules look uneven and arbitrary. You do not fight when you know how what you did, that's so socially clumsy. That's when you say you're sorry, you work hard to undo it, and you work hard to hide the error, because you have shame and a reputation to care for. Because you don't want to be mistaken for someone who doesn't get it. You know our mutual rules, and you're wise enough to see exceptions. Or your friends do that for you.
If you're shamelessly arguing for yourself when the smart and popular know to say they're sorry, you're dumb. Or you do not subscribe to our rules, and we don't invite you anymore.
Yep. The anti-bullying campaigns frequently make the same mistake. It never occurs to them to work it out with the victims on why they deserve it. In fact, the whole idea of them deserving it seems to be taboo. It's not doing the kids any good.
I notice that phenomenon gets accurated represented in one of the Anime I watched: "Mob Psycho 100". When the main character decides to join the body improvement club. Always supportive despite his struggles to be better.
One day when he gets kidnapped by a school gang. His Alpha and his group comes to bail him out and easily crushing them in a fight.
Also if High status men do end up being unnecessarily "mean" to the lower status. They would end up undermining their own group anyway.
Is making fun of someone for being fat or weak holding them to account?
Everything depends on how its done, but a lot of the hazing that Ive seen from strong men was to sharpen iron.
Versus the hazing from weaker men, which was to tear down and be a sad-town-posse together.
So it depends on who was being mean, by what they probably meant by it.
At work, I continuously grind on the gamma that plagues me because hes insufferable, but if he stopped his behavior I would immediately cease and accept him.
For someone else the grinding that I give him would make them change to be better, but the gamma cannot be instructed, even through pain.
But, his grinding must continue, because if i didn't he would act even worse. Again, it depends on the person doing it as to their reason why.
Im not against him on any principle, instead its more like the physical property of bouyancy. He must be pressed because nature denands it.
This happened to me twice in my life. The first time was when I quit drinking. When you quit drinking, you have to say goodbye to all your old drinking buddies. You will simply never stay sober if you don’t because the reason you hung out with them in the first place was because they were enablers of your addiction. This is the hardest thing for people to grasp when they first go to AA. But if you work the steps, your low status traits start to disappear and your life improves and you realize those friends were simply holding you back.
The second time this happened to me was after I started my career. I made fast friends with two other Deltas. These are blue collar, salt-of-the-earth guys. The type of guys that if you called up at three in the morning and told them your basement was flooded, they would be over with waders and sump pumps as soon as they could. We were all single and hung out on the weekends and encouraged each other to lift weights and generally improve. When both of them eventually got married, I was still included in all of their social events. They never ditched me after they got married.
The problem was that even though we were all Deltas, our ambitions didn’t align. While I was buying and renovating 3-family houses in Brooklyn to improve my financial situation, they were buying houses to live in and doing DIY projects on them on the weekends. I found myself a little more distant to them, while the two of them hung tight. The distance was mainly because I was hanging around and making friends with local entrepreneurs instead. I would regularly meet my new friends for coffee to learn from them and we would bounce ideas off of each other. I also advanced in my career at a rapid pace, while they got stuck in dead end jobs in lower management. That means we didn’t converse as much as we used to at work anymore.
I still see my Delta friends a few times per year at a summer barbecues, retirement parties, or for the Super Bowl, but it always comes with jokes. “Hey I haven’t heard from you in a while, you don’t talk to poor people anymore?” “Oh, you came out tonight and honored the little people with your presence?” Things like that. Luckily I have thick skin and a good sense of humor.
I still love those guys, and if one of them called me at three in the morning asking if I could help them because their basement flooded, I would be over as soon as I could with waders and sump pumps. But the reality is they would never ask me.
I am a new reader, sort of. If I am not mistaken, the Alpha Game blog ended around 2018. Is that right? I remember reading it in 2015-2017 or thereabouts. Could you explain why you went from Alpha Game to Sigma game? Did you experience a sort of personal reevaluation. I would be very interested. Also, what did you do in the long interim, if I have this timeline correct. With respect and appreciation. You have certainly had a long, continuous journey of this sort of thought.
I shut down Alpha Game because I found the constant attempts of commenters to ask "what about me" to be tedious. I started Sigma Game up again due to the way in which the understanding of the Sigma Male concept was complicated by the way the term went viral.
I see. So, is the Sigma concept superior to the old understanding of Alpha, or, commensurately, is the Alpha concept inadequate? What has changed with this template from then to now? Excuse me, but I am not as up on this world of SSH as others, for sure.
Vox wrote, "This, of course, is the source of the “crabs in a bucket” phenomenon that plagues most low-status men; one of the reasons that a man’s friends often encourage his negative habits is that they don’t wish for him to grow away from them, as will inevitably happen if he pursues a path of self-improvement that they do not."
Saw this happen with my brother when he was a young man, he realized one day that hanging around smoking pot and drinking with his loser friends was no way to live a life. He came & stayed with my husband and me while working and going to a tech school to become a diesel mechanic, and now he's the biggest world traveler in the family. As far as I know, even though he lives where we grew up he doesn't ever see any of those old friends.
There are whole "communities," nations, even civilization that behave this way. Any member of the group that figures something out, has a windfall or a spot of luck, or engages in any self-improvement at all, a veritable army of neighbors, family and distant family relations descend on them like locusts to mock them, drag them down or just eat all the surplus.
A community of brothers that are committed to excellence is vital for achievement. The practical application of iron sharping iron from Proverbs looks like men holding each other accountable while pushing one another to reach for that which exceeds their grasp. Sometimes that's a hey brother one more mile to go almost there and sometimes its get your ass up there. Such a community is anathema to Doof and gammas.
A good way to tell whether your friend is worth keeping around is seeing whether he's happy for your success, or for your ambition. From the perspective of a turbo-omega with self-improvement ambitions: one time I decided to return to college and get my chemistry degree a bit late in life. One friend group cheered me on like they were football fans. The other had nothing but disapproval, though all for different reasons. ''There's no money in that! Go study that other thing!'' ''What do you need that for? Just go work over there!'' ''You're too old to study! How do you still feel like studying!''. Even when I explained to them it's more for personal reasons, it's in one ear and out the other. They're not here to give helpful advice, they're here to feel smart. You can guess which friend group I now hang out with more.
What is the difference, if any, between male friends of different status and female friends of different status? I imagine the women have a much stronger crab bucket response.
Women are usually far more positive to men self improving than low-status men are, but they will shit test you first to determine whether the change is genuine. Fail the test and you get the "you're not that kind of guy", "why pretend to be something you're not?" routine. Pass it, and you get "I didn't know you had it in you" mixed with a wicked grin and a touch to the shoulder.
Male friends tend to encourage their friends to remain the same. Female friends tend to encourage their friends to do things that render them less socially competive.
They both actively dissuade their friends from improving themselves.
As a young man getting into fitness, I had a couple of losers ask me "why do you bother?" or try to sabotage my efforts and eating habits. Don't worry, just enjoy the evening! Have one!
When discussing fitness, I thought I was encouraging them to self improve, but they were seething with envy, instead.
When I started dressing better they started "jokingly" calling me gay, and a metrosexual. By that point, the relationship was strained, to say the least.
As I started getting female interest, one dude in particular - a Gamma - started sabotaging me, until I nearly punched him at a party after he tried to humiliate me with a "joke" in front of the cute chick who'd been giving me attention.
It's at that event that my Alpha friend put his hand on my shoulder and said "you know you're the average of the 5 ppl you hang out with, right?" Next thing I knew, I was included in his group, and my social experience changed dramatically.
Low status men will continually make excuses and justificstions for staying right where they are in life, rather than improve. Victim consciousness. When they see someone in their circle trying to get out it ticks them off and shines a light on their bullshit.
Excellent story, and an excellent observation from the alpha. It's a good way to track your own worth too. Seek the company of worthy people, seek to be worthy of their company. Your network is your net worth, and it's your personal worth too.
Can confirm. When I made corporal, my CO transferred me to a different sub-unit to help me overcome the natural tendency to fraternize with my buddies. These type of transfers were standing policy back in the day. It was hard, but it worked.
Bullshit. Smoking and joking can still be done while doing pull-ups, crunches, and going for runs with your Lance Cooley buddies. Help them to become NCO’s, Marine. It’s your duty as a leader and an obligation as their friend. Has the United Stated Marine Corps taught you nothing?
Sorry Vox. How many years did you do in the Corps? I did five. Do you think you know the culture better than me? Marines are taught to never leave their buddies behind.
Your use of the term never leaving your buddies behind is bizarre. You don't leave them behind when they're wounded on the battlefield, not when you pick up Corporal. You were either a giant a shitbag or you were never in the Marines.
Being in the Corps is not necessary to explain why you cant be buddies with someone who you order around the same as before you didn't.
Its impossible and destructive to try because it weakens the chain of command, and leaves them open to questioning or opting out, because you are friends and you wont report them.
No-fraternization rules were made to keep the military effective. When given orders, you go, because the guy giving them will not joke back with you.
Fraternization simply doesn’t happen between Lance Corporals and newly minted Corporals. The new Corporal simply doesn’t have enough power. If anything they rely on their Lance Corporal buddies to make them look good while assigning them a little extra work so it doesn’t look like fraternization. After work they still hang out.
Same when you switch to managing in a company, gotta keep the lines to make everyone feel comfortable and not break information barriers that help the workers drone on in happiness.
I'm a gamma.
It's been a long process working through my negative fundamental cycles, but this is completely true.
Quality of friends/women I date has increased dramatically the more cycles I break. Simple correlation. Reality is the complete opposite from the Hollywood sperg fantasy world pushed on us.
You put out excellent, succinct writing. This blog has been a game changer personally. Thanks Vox.
Don't give up. You hold the power to improve your life across every metric. If you don't lift, I recommend you do. The iron never lies. A lodestone.
Ive done this in the past. Gamma behavior confirmed.
Off topic. I think Dave smith would be a good person to introduce the ssh too and promote it. I enjoy his podcast. He is a truth seeking individual. He would be curious about how the term sigma came about. I apologize if this comment was not helpful
I have a different perspective on this issue. I came from third-world country and broken family background. My parents are very low on SSH (My dad was a factory worker, my mom never finished college). Against odds, somehow I was able to build my competence, studied very hard and eventually studied in good university.
After some reflection when socializing with my college friends (most of whom from very well-off background, parents worked in multinational companies, owned big business, or have substantial investment portfolios), I acknowledged that most of them have vision to build so-called empire, and capability to realize it.
However, I realized that if I cannot use the outcome of their life to define what is successful for me as their life were much different than me. I also observed that somehow the higher the stature of your circle, the lifestyle become more competitive and opportunistic
I realized that the opposite side of the spectrum also not healthy. Average joe also does not even want to hold themselves to any standard (loser, if you want to call them), but I found that to befriend people with average status can provide you with a sense of openness and friendliness (instead of worrying of being judged all the times).
This was a painful but necessary aspect of sorting my life out. Men you've treated like brothers can throw the biggest baby bitch Gamma meltdown the moment some posituve change in your life causes them some minute strife, real or perceived.
I was fortunate enough to end up making a few friends who were wiser and either higher-status or exceptional as Deltas. A lot of men really just need to have some positive encouragement without getting bogged down in coulda, shoulda, woulda.
At the beginning of the Pandemic, one of our friends (Bravo) began really growing his automotive repair business and it couldn’t have worked out for a better dude.
Even though none of us said anything to each other, everyone significantly leveled up within the next two or three years.
I’m guessing we all intrinsically new that what Vox said in this post is correct. If we didn’t level up with him, our Bravo friend would likely have found himself in a close circle of friends that didn’t include us.
The whole friend group is better because of the Bravo’s success and fortunately none of us turned out to be crabs.
Luke 16:9: (NEB 1970) "'So I say to you, use your worldly wealth to win friends for yourselves, so that when money is a thing of the past you may be received into an eternal home."
Luke 16:11 (NEB 1970): "If, then, you have not proved trustworthy with the wealth of this world, who will trust you with the wealth that is real?"
May Grace and Peace be with you.
When men who are lower social status decide to self improve to move up the social totem pole, one of the things that shocks them is how much nicer to them the Chads are. In high school when some nerdy guy decides to take weights class, it's very eye opening to see that the Chads in the class are instantly supportive of the newbie.
Most low social status people are constantly trying to hold each other down and stabbing each other in the back. It's exhausting. However, the higher status young men have other stuff going on in their lives, like after school sports, jobs, or trying to go out with some pretty girl and they don't have time to be mean to the people lower than them on the social totem pole.
One of the most painful truths of life is people who are lower on the social totem pole, on average, tend to be meaner and nastier than people higher on the social totem pole. It's the 180 degree opposite of how Hollywood portrays the high school social scene.
If you've got something psychological that messes with your basic social skills, then you're often bullied and left without invitations to social things. At least when you're a teenager. If you're angry or frustrated because of that, you have to get over that. If you're not, you've not improved yet. That anger about how it's unfair disappears when you get it.
People become angry and violent when the rules look uneven and arbitrary. You do not fight when you know how what you did, that's so socially clumsy. That's when you say you're sorry, you work hard to undo it, and you work hard to hide the error, because you have shame and a reputation to care for. Because you don't want to be mistaken for someone who doesn't get it. You know our mutual rules, and you're wise enough to see exceptions. Or your friends do that for you.
If you're shamelessly arguing for yourself when the smart and popular know to say they're sorry, you're dumb. Or you do not subscribe to our rules, and we don't invite you anymore.
Yep. The anti-bullying campaigns frequently make the same mistake. It never occurs to them to work it out with the victims on why they deserve it. In fact, the whole idea of them deserving it seems to be taboo. It's not doing the kids any good.
I notice that phenomenon gets accurated represented in one of the Anime I watched: "Mob Psycho 100". When the main character decides to join the body improvement club. Always supportive despite his struggles to be better.
One day when he gets kidnapped by a school gang. His Alpha and his group comes to bail him out and easily crushing them in a fight.
Also if High status men do end up being unnecessarily "mean" to the lower status. They would end up undermining their own group anyway.
The "being mean" is often just holding people to account, which would be a positive if the lower status male was accepting.
Hazing for maturity.
If it is actually holding people to account.
Is making fun of someone for being fat or weak holding them to account?
Everything depends on how its done, but a lot of the hazing that Ive seen from strong men was to sharpen iron.
Versus the hazing from weaker men, which was to tear down and be a sad-town-posse together.
So it depends on who was being mean, by what they probably meant by it.
At work, I continuously grind on the gamma that plagues me because hes insufferable, but if he stopped his behavior I would immediately cease and accept him.
For someone else the grinding that I give him would make them change to be better, but the gamma cannot be instructed, even through pain.
But, his grinding must continue, because if i didn't he would act even worse. Again, it depends on the person doing it as to their reason why.
Im not against him on any principle, instead its more like the physical property of bouyancy. He must be pressed because nature denands it.
The thing with heat is that you keep it within acceptable range. Not too hot and not too cold. A brittle blade is worse than an easily breakable one.
Sure. I never saw anyone pushed to breaking
I did see 2 boys break and go nuts in school, and while they were outcasts they didn't get pressured that hard.
The ones who got pressured more were more accepted.
But that's just what I've seen, there are of course situations where people went too far, or weren't trying to encourage roughly.
The positive attitude and likeability is part of what makes them high-status in the first place.
They are full enough to be givers of positive energy and elevating others around them.
The empty cup has no tea to spare.
This happened to me twice in my life. The first time was when I quit drinking. When you quit drinking, you have to say goodbye to all your old drinking buddies. You will simply never stay sober if you don’t because the reason you hung out with them in the first place was because they were enablers of your addiction. This is the hardest thing for people to grasp when they first go to AA. But if you work the steps, your low status traits start to disappear and your life improves and you realize those friends were simply holding you back.
The second time this happened to me was after I started my career. I made fast friends with two other Deltas. These are blue collar, salt-of-the-earth guys. The type of guys that if you called up at three in the morning and told them your basement was flooded, they would be over with waders and sump pumps as soon as they could. We were all single and hung out on the weekends and encouraged each other to lift weights and generally improve. When both of them eventually got married, I was still included in all of their social events. They never ditched me after they got married.
The problem was that even though we were all Deltas, our ambitions didn’t align. While I was buying and renovating 3-family houses in Brooklyn to improve my financial situation, they were buying houses to live in and doing DIY projects on them on the weekends. I found myself a little more distant to them, while the two of them hung tight. The distance was mainly because I was hanging around and making friends with local entrepreneurs instead. I would regularly meet my new friends for coffee to learn from them and we would bounce ideas off of each other. I also advanced in my career at a rapid pace, while they got stuck in dead end jobs in lower management. That means we didn’t converse as much as we used to at work anymore.
I still see my Delta friends a few times per year at a summer barbecues, retirement parties, or for the Super Bowl, but it always comes with jokes. “Hey I haven’t heard from you in a while, you don’t talk to poor people anymore?” “Oh, you came out tonight and honored the little people with your presence?” Things like that. Luckily I have thick skin and a good sense of humor.
I still love those guys, and if one of them called me at three in the morning asking if I could help them because their basement flooded, I would be over as soon as I could with waders and sump pumps. But the reality is they would never ask me.
I am a new reader, sort of. If I am not mistaken, the Alpha Game blog ended around 2018. Is that right? I remember reading it in 2015-2017 or thereabouts. Could you explain why you went from Alpha Game to Sigma game? Did you experience a sort of personal reevaluation. I would be very interested. Also, what did you do in the long interim, if I have this timeline correct. With respect and appreciation. You have certainly had a long, continuous journey of this sort of thought.
I shut down Alpha Game because I found the constant attempts of commenters to ask "what about me" to be tedious. I started Sigma Game up again due to the way in which the understanding of the Sigma Male concept was complicated by the way the term went viral.
I see. So, is the Sigma concept superior to the old understanding of Alpha, or, commensurately, is the Alpha concept inadequate? What has changed with this template from then to now? Excuse me, but I am not as up on this world of SSH as others, for sure.
The overall hierarchy and patterns of behavior are more deeply understood, but the core concepts are exactly the same.
Read pinned post on summary page of this Substack
Vox wrote, "This, of course, is the source of the “crabs in a bucket” phenomenon that plagues most low-status men; one of the reasons that a man’s friends often encourage his negative habits is that they don’t wish for him to grow away from them, as will inevitably happen if he pursues a path of self-improvement that they do not."
Saw this happen with my brother when he was a young man, he realized one day that hanging around smoking pot and drinking with his loser friends was no way to live a life. He came & stayed with my husband and me while working and going to a tech school to become a diesel mechanic, and now he's the biggest world traveler in the family. As far as I know, even though he lives where we grew up he doesn't ever see any of those old friends.
Until you reach yacht-rich, money does not substitute well for the lack of Social Proof.
Yacht rich rents better whores.
Rich men can also be low status, if you spend any time with them youd see them split up into the hierarchy like everyone else.
There are whole "communities," nations, even civilization that behave this way. Any member of the group that figures something out, has a windfall or a spot of luck, or engages in any self-improvement at all, a veritable army of neighbors, family and distant family relations descend on them like locusts to mock them, drag them down or just eat all the surplus.
Australian aborigines are infamous for it.
Why the Wheel-level of technology still escapes some ethnos.
A community of brothers that are committed to excellence is vital for achievement. The practical application of iron sharping iron from Proverbs looks like men holding each other accountable while pushing one another to reach for that which exceeds their grasp. Sometimes that's a hey brother one more mile to go almost there and sometimes its get your ass up there. Such a community is anathema to Doof and gammas.
A good way to tell whether your friend is worth keeping around is seeing whether he's happy for your success, or for your ambition. From the perspective of a turbo-omega with self-improvement ambitions: one time I decided to return to college and get my chemistry degree a bit late in life. One friend group cheered me on like they were football fans. The other had nothing but disapproval, though all for different reasons. ''There's no money in that! Go study that other thing!'' ''What do you need that for? Just go work over there!'' ''You're too old to study! How do you still feel like studying!''. Even when I explained to them it's more for personal reasons, it's in one ear and out the other. They're not here to give helpful advice, they're here to feel smart. You can guess which friend group I now hang out with more.
What is the difference, if any, between male friends of different status and female friends of different status? I imagine the women have a much stronger crab bucket response.
Women are usually far more positive to men self improving than low-status men are, but they will shit test you first to determine whether the change is genuine. Fail the test and you get the "you're not that kind of guy", "why pretend to be something you're not?" routine. Pass it, and you get "I didn't know you had it in you" mixed with a wicked grin and a touch to the shoulder.
Male friends tend to encourage their friends to remain the same. Female friends tend to encourage their friends to do things that render them less socially competive.
They both actively dissuade their friends from improving themselves.
"You would look so cute with short hair."
Shedding old habits and Change are two things that most people actively avoid. Maybe that's why the poor get poorer.
All opportunities are unprepared for, and most are lost. While the obstacles come regardless.
As a young man getting into fitness, I had a couple of losers ask me "why do you bother?" or try to sabotage my efforts and eating habits. Don't worry, just enjoy the evening! Have one!
When discussing fitness, I thought I was encouraging them to self improve, but they were seething with envy, instead.
When I started dressing better they started "jokingly" calling me gay, and a metrosexual. By that point, the relationship was strained, to say the least.
As I started getting female interest, one dude in particular - a Gamma - started sabotaging me, until I nearly punched him at a party after he tried to humiliate me with a "joke" in front of the cute chick who'd been giving me attention.
It's at that event that my Alpha friend put his hand on my shoulder and said "you know you're the average of the 5 ppl you hang out with, right?" Next thing I knew, I was included in his group, and my social experience changed dramatically.
Low status men will continually make excuses and justificstions for staying right where they are in life, rather than improve. Victim consciousness. When they see someone in their circle trying to get out it ticks them off and shines a light on their bullshit.
Excellent story, and an excellent observation from the alpha. It's a good way to track your own worth too. Seek the company of worthy people, seek to be worthy of their company. Your network is your net worth, and it's your personal worth too.
Can't be smokin and jokin with your Lance Corporal buddies once you pick up Corporal and you become an NCO.
Can confirm. When I made corporal, my CO transferred me to a different sub-unit to help me overcome the natural tendency to fraternize with my buddies. These type of transfers were standing policy back in the day. It was hard, but it worked.
It's much harder to be respected and looked up to by your buddies you're hanging out with the day before. Your CO was squared away.
Bullshit. Smoking and joking can still be done while doing pull-ups, crunches, and going for runs with your Lance Cooley buddies. Help them to become NCO’s, Marine. It’s your duty as a leader and an obligation as their friend. Has the United Stated Marine Corps taught you nothing?
And there is the distinct scent of Gamma.
You have no idea what you're talking about.
Sorry Vox. How many years did you do in the Corps? I did five. Do you think you know the culture better than me? Marines are taught to never leave their buddies behind.
Your use of the term never leaving your buddies behind is bizarre. You don't leave them behind when they're wounded on the battlefield, not when you pick up Corporal. You were either a giant a shitbag or you were never in the Marines.
Without question. Zero. Yes, I absolutely do. You clearly don't know who I am.
Being in the Corps is not necessary to explain why you cant be buddies with someone who you order around the same as before you didn't.
Its impossible and destructive to try because it weakens the chain of command, and leaves them open to questioning or opting out, because you are friends and you wont report them.
No-fraternization rules were made to keep the military effective. When given orders, you go, because the guy giving them will not joke back with you.
Fraternization simply doesn’t happen between Lance Corporals and newly minted Corporals. The new Corporal simply doesn’t have enough power. If anything they rely on their Lance Corporal buddies to make them look good while assigning them a little extra work so it doesn’t look like fraternization. After work they still hang out.
You're a fucking retard Jim.
You might just enjoy being unprofessional.
Yes, people still hang out after a Cpl with LCpls, but it will change as the new Cpl gets used to being in charge.
Either the new Cpl wants to become a leader and change as he hangs out with other NCOs, or he plays around as if nothing changed.
You don't need to forget your old friends to level up in leadership, but it cant be the same as before.
I did 9. EAS'ed in April 2005 as a SSgt select in the below zone.
You know what I'm referring to. Smoking and joking vs normal leadership Nd professional development.
How many times did you see friends call it quits when one of them was promoted to Corporal? My guess is none.
The relationship changes, no if ands or buts. If it doesn't, there's a poor leadership culture.
Same when you switch to managing in a company, gotta keep the lines to make everyone feel comfortable and not break information barriers that help the workers drone on in happiness.