Some of this is similar to going to pro golfer or golf pro for instruction. He'll be like, "Just swing the club, bro." He can. Probably could pretty well from the get-go.
Can he get you to do it? Not necessarily. He may not be able to see the thing you do at the moment that you shouldn't or are executing improperly. And, it's definitely hard to see. He's got videos of super good golfers, even better than him. He can draw lines showing you this and that at different times during a dynamic variable-ridden action. Can you become one by aping the others? If that were the case, we'd see a lot more of them. Also, there is the small issue with the payments of recurring fees for training providing an incorrect motivation.
The level of play has increased generally over time, however. Things are what they are. It's good to be able to identify the guys with skills and watch them. Maybe some can rub off. Also, maybe not.
I don't know if this falls under the umbrella of ask the sigma, but I've been watching lost for the first time and what intrigues me is how the hierarchy is built so quickly amongst strangers.
Beyond that, the pilot features a woman willing to follow an alpha (or high status male) into danger through a few different scenarios. Is this Hollywood dreaming or do women endure a male version of "shit testing" for higher status males? My instincts would say this exists but I'm curious to know the male perspective. And... is there a lesson for gammas and deltas to learn from this if it's an instinct in alphas?
I think the high version of a rank is able to act like one rank above, temporarily.
High Delta gets his moment of being the Bravo to the Alpha or even a Situational Alpha. But doesn't have the stamina to maintain it, so it's a one time thing.
Or it could be from achievement in his particular specialty. Being on the championship team and fulfilling his role with excellence.
It's also knowing his job so well that he doesn't need Bravo/Alpha supervision to do his task. Employee of the Month gets special recognition as the model for all the other guys on the team.
Average delta is basically an average guy, kind of mediocre and nondescript, generally clueless about women.
A high delta would be in better shape, have greater achievements, and do better with women.
Consider an average male cubicle worker vs a cubicle worker who goes to the gym, has a better social profile,, generally a "higher, better version" of cubicle worker overall.
I get that, but getting my head around it is still tough because we tend to associate the low delta with gamma behavior. Which means high delta would be healthy and opposite to gamma. What happens when a delta begins to understand women for what they are? What happens when a delta is extremely competent and knows it? Does he tell a bravo to duck off because he’s gonna mess something up? Vox seems to have it in his mind that they are all bad around women. I have met men who actually are good with women, but they would fit the mold of a delta best. What would that look like?
This may have been asked and answered before, but I've never read it:
At what point in a man's life does his rank solidify? There are exceptions to nearly everything, but it seems unlikely you could accurately classify an infant or toddler--or even an older child. The pattern of behavior is established during childhood via environment and personal experience, is it not? So if a man is currently a bravo, for instance, when did his pattern of behavior manifest? Puberty? His first LTR? First team sport? First sex? When he left home? First job?
I would think it depends on several variables, but that's just speculation. I'd be interested in what the experts think.
I'm sure Gammas are locked in early, since they are basically children all their lives anyway. But an alpha--how far back did he become an alpha?
Alpha traits can show really early. But we moved away from the child Alphas I knew and can’t say if it holds into adulthood. I suspect it can. Middle school wonder boy the class behind us went from doorman to international expansion overseer for a multi-national entertainment company on internal promotions only. Pure Alpha is pure. The idea of becoming it is insane.
Yeah, I think some alphas are locked in pretty young. But that might be the exception. From 1st through 12th Grade, seems like most of the fights me and other boys had was part of an unspoken competition to prove ourselves the alpha, whatever the superficial reason was.
Some might solidify as an alpha on the playground and never look back. Others were jockeying for position, probably—even though none of us had ever heard of the SSH.
High school is where most settle into their ranks but some take until early-mid 20s to find their lane, usually from having to overcome detrimental upbringings. Given the brain more or less stops developing at the age of 25, that age being a hard limit for rank to solidify sounds about right.
I just want to point out that, while I’m aware homosexual men don’t fit into the SSH, I encountered a gay gamma online recently: emotional incontinence, white knighting, responding hysterically and incoherently to something while entirely missing the point, misuse of terms in an attempt to sound smart, wall of text . . . it was all there.
"LAMBDA: Those men who have quite literally no interest in conventional male-female sexual relations. They clearly have their own hierarchy of sorts, but I can't say that I know much about it other than it appears to somehow involve youth, free weights, and mustaches."
Fags are given their own category because they're not interested in women, but social hierarchy and personality types can still apply to them, albeit with some caveats.
I disagree that astrology has no "explanatory power". Astrology, when a serious interest or belief of either men or women, is a powerful and reliable explanation and predictor of their unhinged personality, poor choices in life, and lack of personal responsibility. For the women, the stars are a scapegoat for their problems in life. For the men, they are probably a gamma just trying to get into someones pants.
Joking aside, yes the utility of the SSH applies to men and women. It's actually quite vital to understand when navigating any male dominated space, especially the work place. It's also helpful for single women to understand what they do (or don't) want and are (or are not) attracted to in a partner, and better identify those men. I learned about the SSH prior to meeting and marrying my husband. From it, I gathered I would probably fit best with a Bravo or possibly Sigma. My husband actively chooses to function as a Bravo at work, but is often propped up as Alpha. He would typically walk away from that role rather than deal with it, which Bravo's don't normally like doing. So personally I think he's ultimately Sigma, but either way, the SSH was a solid format to understand what I was looking for in a husband, and better understand the man I married.
Will the red pill manosphere self-improvement coaches ever apply the SSH to their programs? I recently listened to a livestream of six of them give an analysis on the SSH, and they completely missed the point. They called it,"dude bro crack", and said that Vox created the categories, especially the sigma rank, to make himself feel special. I couldn't believe it. I don't know if they felt threatened or something else.
The hypothesis is amusing. Apparently I didn't feel special enough being considered an Alpha, so I concocted the concept of Sigma out of thin air. Never mind that Sigma is lower than Alpha in social terms.
Of course they felt threatened. Who is going to listen to them if everyone listens to me? Not that this would ever happen, but grifters tend to think in zero-sum terms.
The red pill manosphere self-improvement coaches are mostly all grifters now. Shame what happened to the community but I guess it was inevitable. Most of the normal guys that used to be a part of it all got married and had kids.
If those self help guys are simply grifters – which most of them are – they will never incorporate the SSH, because they are selling the myth that anyone can become an Alpha.
For me, the SSH has been like a key that finally unlocked a better understanding of things I’ve observed in both the past and present but didn’t fully grasp before. The clarification of toxic and low-status behaviors, like solipsism, has been incredibly useful in navigating and making sense of the world.
I'm exploring it as a tool for writing, especially when it comes to developing male character dynamics.
I’ve found it particularly helpful in internet discussions like this one. Anyone who spends more than a few minutes online will quickly learn that identifying "gammas" is like avoiding a landmine—or detonating one if there is reason to.
Since I started reading this blog a few weeks ago, it’s become my favorite. I look forward to these updates as well as the Hypergamouse comic.
The Socio aspects of the SSH have been invaluable for my understanding of the workplace and how to deal with different people.
Hiring, firing, and day to day operations etc.
Probably high delta self employed. I thrive running a small operation of 3-5 competent men. More than that feels exhausting, but also couldn't imagine going back to work on somebody's payroll
I regularly deal with a couple of strong Alphas and wouldn't take their lives for 10X of what they make in a year. I feel very comfortable in a situational bravo position as a subcontractor and off, but that's as far up as I'm capable of operating.
Finding my lane, staying in it, and polishing my strengths has made life much more balanced and good.
I have found SSH invaluable, and am so thankful that I found out about it. I know I can never change my nature, but I can work to master it, and resist the worst parts of it. Just the other day I caught myself going Gamma in an online discussion about Elon Musk. I didn't even realize I was doing it until I read back through my own words. Delete==>Delete==>Delete.
About the innate setting of SSH. I don't think it is as fixed as some commenters think. I had a long term auto-immune problem that came with lots of hormone troubles, low thyroid, low-T, etc. Once the auto-immune was solved and I could exercise again, anxiety lowered, and it was easier to not give a damn about the small stuff, like being wrong about some point of argument.
In the Thomas Seager book "Uncommon Cold", he reports massive testosterone increases from the use of ice baths. I used to think the British practice of having public school kids running around in shorts and short sleeves in cold weather was cruel, but if it increased the T-levels and shifted the numbers up the SSH scale, more alphas, bravos, deltas, and fewer gammas, it was a wise practice. The British Empire wasn't built by gammas.
Researching self-development and neuroplasticity, the chief problem with developing a more dominant SSH profile seems to be a matter of desire rather than it being impossible for some men to develop the needed skills. For example, it is not that a delta can't develop the skills to be an alpha, its that even if he were to, he would ultimately still prefer to be a delta. The intrinsic motivation for such radical change rarely exists. When it comes to gamma and omega, there is a much stronger case to be made that those men would genuinely prefer something different but don't know how to change or haven't realized that they want to. Basically, the personality traits that make up an SSH profile are stable because most people generally have the freedom to act as they want.
It's not set in stone but it's easier to come down than to climb up.
I knew an alpha who developed heart problems, every time he felt a strong emotion his heart would malfunction. Over time he became a skinnyfat annoying gamma.
I’d add that going up is either greatly facilitated by, or possibly even requires that, that the lower-value behavior be learned rather than innate. If it’s learned, it can be unlearned much more easily than training yourself out of a behavioral pattern that you’ve been locked into since you were a baby.
A classic oversight in nature vs. nurture is deprivation. From internet:
"Height is another example of a trait influenced by an interaction between nature and nurture. A child might inherit the genes for height. However, if they grow up in a deprived environment where proper nourishment isn't received, they might never attain the height they could have had if they'd grown up in a healthier environment."
People have their natural inclinations but if you are deprived enough that damage is going to override and outwardly overwhelm any innate setting. If there was a plant that was never watered, an animal who you beat the hell out of every day, a man you pumped full of strange MKUltra drugs and hypnosis all hours they are going to act their damage out more than their innate nature. Though I suspect even the reaction to deprivation will shift based on their innate SSH - some men wither under oppressive lives and others fight like hell until they die.
There was an amusing study by Paul Zak at Claremont where men became less liberal when they got testosterone injections. And several years back, the horribly Gamma “Try Guys” were found to have the T levels of 85 year old men.
On the other hand, there are jacked, high-T Gammas, one of which I know IRL, so it’s definitely not the sole reason.
What you're describing sounds like a normal sane guy with some hormonal problems. When the problems were resolved you felt like your normal self again.
The link between testosterone and ssh is a valid one, but there are some flaws with it.
What happens when a gamma takes testosterone?
I'm only aware of 3 such cases. One case, was this guy from a rock band who hired a hitman to kill his wife and the other 2 are guys I know in real life. Those two guys went from mousy passive aggressive guys to full blown douchebags. Delusion levels skyrocketed, other then that not much seems to change.
There are also gammas in fitness. Look up "fake assassin" or fat lifters/fat jacked guys in general.
Ok, my personal experience wasn't the place to start, as I was pretty much a social outcast through high school so the low-t possibly preceded the auto-immune. Auto-immune is more common among wonen who are low-t, but whether there is a connection I don't know.
The important idea is the malleability of the youth. Learning to live with high-T while in late grade school and high school is not going to be the same as a 25-30 year old taking testosterone shots.
I think it is primarily nature. My father had seven siblings, six of them boys. They were spread in age quite significantly. I think around 20 years from eldest to youngest. All of the brothers were Deltas, with one exception who was a Gamma. He was the third youngest. He really was the problem child of the family and my father had to get him out of trouble on a regular basis. I can't imagine he was treated differently from his brothers and I think he was just born like that. Also he actually was a very likable character, despite all his flaws, which makes it all the more tragic.
I know a guy who's nearly seven feet tall and genetically predisposed to building that lean muscle. He can't even dribble a basketball, though - he practiced golf and baseball.
Nature gives potential. Nurture determines the degree to which you fulfill it.
I have a 20 month old son, and since 12 months he's been showing a lot of Gamma traits, different than just normal children being fussy and obstinate.
As Vox mentions in his reply, I'm hoping to break Nature with Nurture, but the Nature started off strong with every bad habit imaginable being attractive to him, in a very Gamma way. Even without language or social skills, he manipulates and avoids as his primary interactions. Refuses to make eye contact with anyone.
It's was amazing to recognize this pattern so strongly so early, and it has just kept up. Things get fixed, then he invents new ways to behave specifically to irritate.
I have a 3 month old son as well, and he acts completely differently after being a few weeks old, than my first son. Already it's apparent he is developing skills faster because he just watches us, where my first son refuses to watch or learn anything directed in any way.
I have a 13-year-old gamma/narcissist. I identified it at about one year of age. While doing my best to ensure I didn't create a self-fulfilling prophecy, unfortunately my diagnosis was correct.
I have good medical reasons to believe it is the result of congenital brain damage to the amygdala. I am not making a universal claim, because that obviously can't explain the vast quantity of gammas in the world. I'm just saying that in my son's case it probably is extremely heavily Nature for him.
The SSH has been useful to me, as well as Anonymous Conservative's book on narcissists, as I've had to create a parenting plan more-or-less on my own. The main approach is a rigorous approach on honesty, especially self-honesty, to give him experiences where honesty produces positive experiences, especially honesty that otherwise hurts him somehow, and lying and generally being a gamma gets immediate and strong negative feedback. My wife, being a woman and therefore also very sensitive to and averse to gammatude, has also been very helpful in creating the negative experiences when he gammas too much.
As he grows into more maturity, we've also made a point of showing him directly what the situation is and explaining it to him, and showing him concretely with real-world examples and people where the roads lead. Something parents should be doing for their children more anyhow. It seems to me one of the key plays of Satan is to isolate the young from the sort of contact with people who have walked the road that they could learn from, hence, "trust nobody over 30", or, in other words, learn nothing about how your early choices impact your later life.
I won't know how it turns out for another 10 years or so. But I can say at the moment, the situation is not hopeless, and it is far better than it would be if I had no idea what was going on. I've seen some parallels in our family friend network and we're doing better than the roughly comparable baselines I have around me. Whether he'll ever "graduate" gamma I don't know, but I still have hope he'll learn how to control it if nothing else.
I have not directly introduced him to the full-on concepts yet. I really want to wait until he has the maturity to process the ideas and not create his own self-fulfilling prophecy, or use it as an excuse, but to see it as just one of the challenges he has to overcome in life, of which he has plenty anyhow. I'm estimating another 2-ish years, when he's 15 or so. Of the whole process, this is the thing I'm most scared of, honestly. I want to equip him with the knowledge, but there's also a lot of bad ways he could process this. Still, I'm cautiously optimistic that the relationship I've built with him and our explicit focus on honesty and self-honesty will be able to pull through to the good outcomes.
My other son is a Delta. Always has been, and I see little reason he will ever be anything else.
Yes I think emphasizing honesty helps, and teaching the b
behavior to do instead. My 9-year-old cousin was changing the rules of checkers so he wouldn't lose. His dad heard and told him, "No, don't change the rules. Lose gracuously, give him a handshake."
As with all things, it's a combination. But as a general rule, Nurture tends to break Nature. SSH is probably genetics modified negatively by life experiences. There are probably Gammas who could have been Deltas if they'd been raised differently. But they never would have been Alphas.
Nurture is best conceived as maximizing Nature. It can't fix Nature or replace it.
Nurture honing Nature? Reminds me of a friend married to an Army officer. They had trouble getting pregnant, but after some IVF she was pregnant with twins. About 8 mos after the twins were born -- since they had NOT bothered with b.c. -- oops! She was preggo again! About 10 mos after the 3rd kid was born.... OMG! Preggo with TWINS again! So in her early 30s, she had four in diapers! And when her husband was sent ahead to his new post in Germany, she had to fly across the pond by herself with FOUR of the little critters! She did great!
Before she left, I was amazed watching her with the babies. They were allowed to yell, scream, mumble... whatever noises they wanted to make. The only sound that would receive a frown from her was whining. All four grew up without ever whining; turned out to be great kids. But, being 'shaped' that way was pretty cool!
Here's an amusing celebrity anecdote I stumbled across that illustrates the static nature of SSH rank.
The British actor Robert Pattinson (Twilight, Harry Potter, The Batman) had a female stalker who would not relent in her pursuit of him. Given his fame and fortune, he probably has a fair number of them, but this one stalker was especially concerning.
He decided to solve the problem once and for all. He took her on a dinner date. Her romantic fantasy come true!
The entire dinner consisted of him complaining about his life and career in continuous barrage of negativity and whining. She was like a therapist, listening the entire time.
The result was that the female stalker was disgusted by him, couldn't believe she had fallen for such a downer of a man, lost all interest.
Stalker problem solved. Delta problem-solving for the win (my hypothesis).
Per Wikipedia:
-Shy teenager, dad pushed him into theater to socialize more. NOT ALPHA.
-Developed anxiety when fame starting growing. NOT ALPHA.
-Girlfriend cheats on him. They reconcile. NOT ALPHA.
My take is that he is a delta with great career success, a situational alpha, but at heart he's a born delta.
If you have enough details about a man and pay attention, you can clearly see the SSH patterns.
Right. I personally couldn't imagine a genuinely high-SSH man going through the trouble of turning off a stalker by acting the cringe Gamma, let alone letting the incident become common knowledge.
This wouldn't work for every stalker, I'm sure, but a lot of people believe they know someone based on a very narrow range of experience. Say, seeing them in a movie and a couple of interviews, or even just getting to know someone on the internet. Getting acquainted with the very ordinary reality is dis-illusioning, and will often destroy the crush.
You see this a lot when a couple who have considered themselves boyfriend and girlfriend online finally get to meet and spend a few days together in real life; the chemistry just isn't there, and that's the end of that.
Some of this is similar to going to pro golfer or golf pro for instruction. He'll be like, "Just swing the club, bro." He can. Probably could pretty well from the get-go.
Can he get you to do it? Not necessarily. He may not be able to see the thing you do at the moment that you shouldn't or are executing improperly. And, it's definitely hard to see. He's got videos of super good golfers, even better than him. He can draw lines showing you this and that at different times during a dynamic variable-ridden action. Can you become one by aping the others? If that were the case, we'd see a lot more of them. Also, there is the small issue with the payments of recurring fees for training providing an incorrect motivation.
The level of play has increased generally over time, however. Things are what they are. It's good to be able to identify the guys with skills and watch them. Maybe some can rub off. Also, maybe not.
I don't know if this falls under the umbrella of ask the sigma, but I've been watching lost for the first time and what intrigues me is how the hierarchy is built so quickly amongst strangers.
Beyond that, the pilot features a woman willing to follow an alpha (or high status male) into danger through a few different scenarios. Is this Hollywood dreaming or do women endure a male version of "shit testing" for higher status males? My instincts would say this exists but I'm curious to know the male perspective. And... is there a lesson for gammas and deltas to learn from this if it's an instinct in alphas?
Vox, what in your estimation is the epitome of what a delta can be?
Not Vox, but the answer is high delta.
I have a 2nd place in a world championship, a top place the year before that, but still a delta.
Don't confuse your SSH rank with your maximum personal potential.
I’m asking about the traits of a high delta. What exactly are they and how are they different?
I think the high version of a rank is able to act like one rank above, temporarily.
High Delta gets his moment of being the Bravo to the Alpha or even a Situational Alpha. But doesn't have the stamina to maintain it, so it's a one time thing.
Or it could be from achievement in his particular specialty. Being on the championship team and fulfilling his role with excellence.
It's also knowing his job so well that he doesn't need Bravo/Alpha supervision to do his task. Employee of the Month gets special recognition as the model for all the other guys on the team.
Average delta is basically an average guy, kind of mediocre and nondescript, generally clueless about women.
A high delta would be in better shape, have greater achievements, and do better with women.
Consider an average male cubicle worker vs a cubicle worker who goes to the gym, has a better social profile,, generally a "higher, better version" of cubicle worker overall.
Not trying to be mean, but this is not very descriptive. Cubicle worker vs better cubicle worker isn’t useful.
Trying to explain that it's a matter of degree. It's like rating a woman an 8 instead of 7. A delta 8 is higher than a delta 7.
I get that, but getting my head around it is still tough because we tend to associate the low delta with gamma behavior. Which means high delta would be healthy and opposite to gamma. What happens when a delta begins to understand women for what they are? What happens when a delta is extremely competent and knows it? Does he tell a bravo to duck off because he’s gonna mess something up? Vox seems to have it in his mind that they are all bad around women. I have met men who actually are good with women, but they would fit the mold of a delta best. What would that look like?
This may have been asked and answered before, but I've never read it:
At what point in a man's life does his rank solidify? There are exceptions to nearly everything, but it seems unlikely you could accurately classify an infant or toddler--or even an older child. The pattern of behavior is established during childhood via environment and personal experience, is it not? So if a man is currently a bravo, for instance, when did his pattern of behavior manifest? Puberty? His first LTR? First team sport? First sex? When he left home? First job?
I would think it depends on several variables, but that's just speculation. I'd be interested in what the experts think.
I'm sure Gammas are locked in early, since they are basically children all their lives anyway. But an alpha--how far back did he become an alpha?
I don't think I started as a Gamma. I'd like to know if I started there or if something happened.
It doesn't matter to fixing it, but it'd be nice to know.
Alpha traits can show really early. But we moved away from the child Alphas I knew and can’t say if it holds into adulthood. I suspect it can. Middle school wonder boy the class behind us went from doorman to international expansion overseer for a multi-national entertainment company on internal promotions only. Pure Alpha is pure. The idea of becoming it is insane.
Yeah, I think some alphas are locked in pretty young. But that might be the exception. From 1st through 12th Grade, seems like most of the fights me and other boys had was part of an unspoken competition to prove ourselves the alpha, whatever the superficial reason was.
Some might solidify as an alpha on the playground and never look back. Others were jockeying for position, probably—even though none of us had ever heard of the SSH.
High school is where most settle into their ranks but some take until early-mid 20s to find their lane, usually from having to overcome detrimental upbringings. Given the brain more or less stops developing at the age of 25, that age being a hard limit for rank to solidify sounds about right.
That makes sense.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrxI_euTX4A
For most people, High school
I just want to point out that, while I’m aware homosexual men don’t fit into the SSH, I encountered a gay gamma online recently: emotional incontinence, white knighting, responding hysterically and incoherently to something while entirely missing the point, misuse of terms in an attempt to sound smart, wall of text . . . it was all there.
"LAMBDA: Those men who have quite literally no interest in conventional male-female sexual relations. They clearly have their own hierarchy of sorts, but I can't say that I know much about it other than it appears to somehow involve youth, free weights, and mustaches."
Taken from here: https://sigmagame.substack.com/p/the-socio-sexual-hierarchy
Fags are given their own category because they're not interested in women, but social hierarchy and personality types can still apply to them, albeit with some caveats.
I think that rank is called Lamda. A Gamma on nitrous?
I disagree that astrology has no "explanatory power". Astrology, when a serious interest or belief of either men or women, is a powerful and reliable explanation and predictor of their unhinged personality, poor choices in life, and lack of personal responsibility. For the women, the stars are a scapegoat for their problems in life. For the men, they are probably a gamma just trying to get into someones pants.
Joking aside, yes the utility of the SSH applies to men and women. It's actually quite vital to understand when navigating any male dominated space, especially the work place. It's also helpful for single women to understand what they do (or don't) want and are (or are not) attracted to in a partner, and better identify those men. I learned about the SSH prior to meeting and marrying my husband. From it, I gathered I would probably fit best with a Bravo or possibly Sigma. My husband actively chooses to function as a Bravo at work, but is often propped up as Alpha. He would typically walk away from that role rather than deal with it, which Bravo's don't normally like doing. So personally I think he's ultimately Sigma, but either way, the SSH was a solid format to understand what I was looking for in a husband, and better understand the man I married.
Will the red pill manosphere self-improvement coaches ever apply the SSH to their programs? I recently listened to a livestream of six of them give an analysis on the SSH, and they completely missed the point. They called it,"dude bro crack", and said that Vox created the categories, especially the sigma rank, to make himself feel special. I couldn't believe it. I don't know if they felt threatened or something else.
What would happen if they applied the SSH?
The hypothesis is amusing. Apparently I didn't feel special enough being considered an Alpha, so I concocted the concept of Sigma out of thin air. Never mind that Sigma is lower than Alpha in social terms.
Of course they felt threatened. Who is going to listen to them if everyone listens to me? Not that this would ever happen, but grifters tend to think in zero-sum terms.
The red pill manosphere self-improvement coaches are mostly all grifters now. Shame what happened to the community but I guess it was inevitable. Most of the normal guys that used to be a part of it all got married and had kids.
Remember that Cenk's nephew was a PUA wannabe before he started his Twitch grift. It's not a field populated by the particularly insightful or clever.
Yes. And I think many on them are Gammas posing as Alphas. Myron from Fresh & Fit is the prime example of this. You can't get any more Gamma than him.
I think it depends.
If those self help guys are simply grifters – which most of them are – they will never incorporate the SSH, because they are selling the myth that anyone can become an Alpha.
Wisdom is free, but nobody is buying. The most profitable self help is one that helps you feel something akin to "confidence."
They're selling ideas, not models!
Then there are the MGTOW guys. Either Gammas, beaten-down Deltas, or suspected Lambdas.
This is why SSH is important. Hypothetical conversation:
Teri: I'm sorry, but Heather likes Chad, not you.
Delta: Yeah right, Chad's handsome and tall, but I'm responsible.
Teri: (looking up to heaven) Audibly sighs
I'm new to the SSH philosophy. Can someone explain what a delta man is?
Delta - the average man. One of the bros; reliable; does his job.
It's not a philosophy, it's a taxonomy.
Yes, that's a more accurate term.
Pinned post on the front page.
https://sigmagame.substack.com/p/the-socio-sexual-hierarchy
Thanks.
For me, the SSH has been like a key that finally unlocked a better understanding of things I’ve observed in both the past and present but didn’t fully grasp before. The clarification of toxic and low-status behaviors, like solipsism, has been incredibly useful in navigating and making sense of the world.
I'm exploring it as a tool for writing, especially when it comes to developing male character dynamics.
I’ve found it particularly helpful in internet discussions like this one. Anyone who spends more than a few minutes online will quickly learn that identifying "gammas" is like avoiding a landmine—or detonating one if there is reason to.
Since I started reading this blog a few weeks ago, it’s become my favorite. I look forward to these updates as well as the Hypergamouse comic.
It's helping me read people. I can manage the Alpha I know, and I impressed the Bravo by following the chain of command.
Be Your Best Self.
Sure, it's cheesy. And sounds like something you'd see on a throw pillow in the "Home Decor" section at Target. But it's good advice.
I find it hard to conceptualize, at times, but "Be Better Today Than Yesterday" works in those instances.
The Socio aspects of the SSH have been invaluable for my understanding of the workplace and how to deal with different people.
Hiring, firing, and day to day operations etc.
Probably high delta self employed. I thrive running a small operation of 3-5 competent men. More than that feels exhausting, but also couldn't imagine going back to work on somebody's payroll
I regularly deal with a couple of strong Alphas and wouldn't take their lives for 10X of what they make in a year. I feel very comfortable in a situational bravo position as a subcontractor and off, but that's as far up as I'm capable of operating.
Finding my lane, staying in it, and polishing my strengths has made life much more balanced and good.
I have found SSH invaluable, and am so thankful that I found out about it. I know I can never change my nature, but I can work to master it, and resist the worst parts of it. Just the other day I caught myself going Gamma in an online discussion about Elon Musk. I didn't even realize I was doing it until I read back through my own words. Delete==>Delete==>Delete.
Great job!
Saying less has been the best anti-gamma thing I've done.
About the innate setting of SSH. I don't think it is as fixed as some commenters think. I had a long term auto-immune problem that came with lots of hormone troubles, low thyroid, low-T, etc. Once the auto-immune was solved and I could exercise again, anxiety lowered, and it was easier to not give a damn about the small stuff, like being wrong about some point of argument.
In the Thomas Seager book "Uncommon Cold", he reports massive testosterone increases from the use of ice baths. I used to think the British practice of having public school kids running around in shorts and short sleeves in cold weather was cruel, but if it increased the T-levels and shifted the numbers up the SSH scale, more alphas, bravos, deltas, and fewer gammas, it was a wise practice. The British Empire wasn't built by gammas.
Researching self-development and neuroplasticity, the chief problem with developing a more dominant SSH profile seems to be a matter of desire rather than it being impossible for some men to develop the needed skills. For example, it is not that a delta can't develop the skills to be an alpha, its that even if he were to, he would ultimately still prefer to be a delta. The intrinsic motivation for such radical change rarely exists. When it comes to gamma and omega, there is a much stronger case to be made that those men would genuinely prefer something different but don't know how to change or haven't realized that they want to. Basically, the personality traits that make up an SSH profile are stable because most people generally have the freedom to act as they want.
I suppose, if one can ignore the role of hormone levels in determing behavior, especially at a young more plastic age.
Men settle at their level. One can blame circumstance for a moment, but in the long run you get what you chose.
It's not set in stone but it's easier to come down than to climb up.
I knew an alpha who developed heart problems, every time he felt a strong emotion his heart would malfunction. Over time he became a skinnyfat annoying gamma.
I’d add that going up is either greatly facilitated by, or possibly even requires that, that the lower-value behavior be learned rather than innate. If it’s learned, it can be unlearned much more easily than training yourself out of a behavioral pattern that you’ve been locked into since you were a baby.
It's a case of rising to the level of your nature, I think.
A classic oversight in nature vs. nurture is deprivation. From internet:
"Height is another example of a trait influenced by an interaction between nature and nurture. A child might inherit the genes for height. However, if they grow up in a deprived environment where proper nourishment isn't received, they might never attain the height they could have had if they'd grown up in a healthier environment."
People have their natural inclinations but if you are deprived enough that damage is going to override and outwardly overwhelm any innate setting. If there was a plant that was never watered, an animal who you beat the hell out of every day, a man you pumped full of strange MKUltra drugs and hypnosis all hours they are going to act their damage out more than their innate nature. Though I suspect even the reaction to deprivation will shift based on their innate SSH - some men wither under oppressive lives and others fight like hell until they die.
There was an amusing study by Paul Zak at Claremont where men became less liberal when they got testosterone injections. And several years back, the horribly Gamma “Try Guys” were found to have the T levels of 85 year old men.
On the other hand, there are jacked, high-T Gammas, one of which I know IRL, so it’s definitely not the sole reason.
What you're describing sounds like a normal sane guy with some hormonal problems. When the problems were resolved you felt like your normal self again.
The link between testosterone and ssh is a valid one, but there are some flaws with it.
What happens when a gamma takes testosterone?
I'm only aware of 3 such cases. One case, was this guy from a rock band who hired a hitman to kill his wife and the other 2 are guys I know in real life. Those two guys went from mousy passive aggressive guys to full blown douchebags. Delusion levels skyrocketed, other then that not much seems to change.
There are also gammas in fitness. Look up "fake assassin" or fat lifters/fat jacked guys in general.
Ok, my personal experience wasn't the place to start, as I was pretty much a social outcast through high school so the low-t possibly preceded the auto-immune. Auto-immune is more common among wonen who are low-t, but whether there is a connection I don't know.
The important idea is the malleability of the youth. Learning to live with high-T while in late grade school and high school is not going to be the same as a 25-30 year old taking testosterone shots.
I was musing in the comments and then realized "hey, I can just ask the source since this is his blog"
Vox, would you say that the SSH and a man's rank is ontological? Genetic? Or is it developed over time through life experiences?
Is it nature or nurture, essentially. Apologies if you've already explained that elsewhere.
"Is it nature or nurture..."
I think it is primarily nature. My father had seven siblings, six of them boys. They were spread in age quite significantly. I think around 20 years from eldest to youngest. All of the brothers were Deltas, with one exception who was a Gamma. He was the third youngest. He really was the problem child of the family and my father had to get him out of trouble on a regular basis. I can't imagine he was treated differently from his brothers and I think he was just born like that. Also he actually was a very likable character, despite all his flaws, which makes it all the more tragic.
I know a guy who's nearly seven feet tall and genetically predisposed to building that lean muscle. He can't even dribble a basketball, though - he practiced golf and baseball.
Nature gives potential. Nurture determines the degree to which you fulfill it.
I have a 20 month old son, and since 12 months he's been showing a lot of Gamma traits, different than just normal children being fussy and obstinate.
As Vox mentions in his reply, I'm hoping to break Nature with Nurture, but the Nature started off strong with every bad habit imaginable being attractive to him, in a very Gamma way. Even without language or social skills, he manipulates and avoids as his primary interactions. Refuses to make eye contact with anyone.
It's was amazing to recognize this pattern so strongly so early, and it has just kept up. Things get fixed, then he invents new ways to behave specifically to irritate.
I have a 3 month old son as well, and he acts completely differently after being a few weeks old, than my first son. Already it's apparent he is developing skills faster because he just watches us, where my first son refuses to watch or learn anything directed in any way.
I have a 13-year-old gamma/narcissist. I identified it at about one year of age. While doing my best to ensure I didn't create a self-fulfilling prophecy, unfortunately my diagnosis was correct.
I have good medical reasons to believe it is the result of congenital brain damage to the amygdala. I am not making a universal claim, because that obviously can't explain the vast quantity of gammas in the world. I'm just saying that in my son's case it probably is extremely heavily Nature for him.
The SSH has been useful to me, as well as Anonymous Conservative's book on narcissists, as I've had to create a parenting plan more-or-less on my own. The main approach is a rigorous approach on honesty, especially self-honesty, to give him experiences where honesty produces positive experiences, especially honesty that otherwise hurts him somehow, and lying and generally being a gamma gets immediate and strong negative feedback. My wife, being a woman and therefore also very sensitive to and averse to gammatude, has also been very helpful in creating the negative experiences when he gammas too much.
As he grows into more maturity, we've also made a point of showing him directly what the situation is and explaining it to him, and showing him concretely with real-world examples and people where the roads lead. Something parents should be doing for their children more anyhow. It seems to me one of the key plays of Satan is to isolate the young from the sort of contact with people who have walked the road that they could learn from, hence, "trust nobody over 30", or, in other words, learn nothing about how your early choices impact your later life.
I won't know how it turns out for another 10 years or so. But I can say at the moment, the situation is not hopeless, and it is far better than it would be if I had no idea what was going on. I've seen some parallels in our family friend network and we're doing better than the roughly comparable baselines I have around me. Whether he'll ever "graduate" gamma I don't know, but I still have hope he'll learn how to control it if nothing else.
I have not directly introduced him to the full-on concepts yet. I really want to wait until he has the maturity to process the ideas and not create his own self-fulfilling prophecy, or use it as an excuse, but to see it as just one of the challenges he has to overcome in life, of which he has plenty anyhow. I'm estimating another 2-ish years, when he's 15 or so. Of the whole process, this is the thing I'm most scared of, honestly. I want to equip him with the knowledge, but there's also a lot of bad ways he could process this. Still, I'm cautiously optimistic that the relationship I've built with him and our explicit focus on honesty and self-honesty will be able to pull through to the good outcomes.
My other son is a Delta. Always has been, and I see little reason he will ever be anything else.
Thank you very much for this reply.
I agree getting The Label can be very thought-ending in terms of him being able to give up. Ill have to be careful with that too.
If my son can just be aware of and control his tendencies that would be enough of a success for me. Getting him to delta is my dream at the moment.
Yes I think emphasizing honesty helps, and teaching the b
behavior to do instead. My 9-year-old cousin was changing the rules of checkers so he wouldn't lose. His dad heard and told him, "No, don't change the rules. Lose gracuously, give him a handshake."
As with all things, it's a combination. But as a general rule, Nurture tends to break Nature. SSH is probably genetics modified negatively by life experiences. There are probably Gammas who could have been Deltas if they'd been raised differently. But they never would have been Alphas.
Nurture is best conceived as maximizing Nature. It can't fix Nature or replace it.
Nurture honing Nature? Reminds me of a friend married to an Army officer. They had trouble getting pregnant, but after some IVF she was pregnant with twins. About 8 mos after the twins were born -- since they had NOT bothered with b.c. -- oops! She was preggo again! About 10 mos after the 3rd kid was born.... OMG! Preggo with TWINS again! So in her early 30s, she had four in diapers! And when her husband was sent ahead to his new post in Germany, she had to fly across the pond by herself with FOUR of the little critters! She did great!
Before she left, I was amazed watching her with the babies. They were allowed to yell, scream, mumble... whatever noises they wanted to make. The only sound that would receive a frown from her was whining. All four grew up without ever whining; turned out to be great kids. But, being 'shaped' that way was pretty cool!
Oops -- 2+1+2 is not four... I just caught that!
A good response. Thank you for elucidating.
Here's an amusing celebrity anecdote I stumbled across that illustrates the static nature of SSH rank.
The British actor Robert Pattinson (Twilight, Harry Potter, The Batman) had a female stalker who would not relent in her pursuit of him. Given his fame and fortune, he probably has a fair number of them, but this one stalker was especially concerning.
He decided to solve the problem once and for all. He took her on a dinner date. Her romantic fantasy come true!
The entire dinner consisted of him complaining about his life and career in continuous barrage of negativity and whining. She was like a therapist, listening the entire time.
The result was that the female stalker was disgusted by him, couldn't believe she had fallen for such a downer of a man, lost all interest.
Stalker problem solved. Delta problem-solving for the win (my hypothesis).
Per Wikipedia:
-Shy teenager, dad pushed him into theater to socialize more. NOT ALPHA.
-Developed anxiety when fame starting growing. NOT ALPHA.
-Girlfriend cheats on him. They reconcile. NOT ALPHA.
My take is that he is a delta with great career success, a situational alpha, but at heart he's a born delta.
If you have enough details about a man and pay attention, you can clearly see the SSH patterns.
Right. I personally couldn't imagine a genuinely high-SSH man going through the trouble of turning off a stalker by acting the cringe Gamma, let alone letting the incident become common knowledge.
That's brilliant.
This wouldn't work for every stalker, I'm sure, but a lot of people believe they know someone based on a very narrow range of experience. Say, seeing them in a movie and a couple of interviews, or even just getting to know someone on the internet. Getting acquainted with the very ordinary reality is dis-illusioning, and will often destroy the crush.
You see this a lot when a couple who have considered themselves boyfriend and girlfriend online finally get to meet and spend a few days together in real life; the chemistry just isn't there, and that's the end of that.