The SSH Done Right

When art reflects reality

In which it is observed that Mike Judge’s various characters map rather well onto to the socio-sexual hierarchy despite preceding it by decades:

There’s this theory floating around the internet - the male socio-sexual hierarchy - which is a taxonomy of six male personality types and how they fare in society. Once you start seeing it in real life, you start noticing something else: whenever there’s a well-concieved, vivid male fictional character, his SSH rank will usually be identifiable. Sun Wukong, a sigma, has been China’s shorthand for the charismatic maverick1 for years. Quasimodo, an omega, easily reads as a synonym for a freak. Call someone a quasimodo - you won’t be complimenting his ability to ring bells, I can tell you that much. Samwise Gamgee is so well-liked precisely because he’s a delta - a virtuous hero, but one that the average joe can relate to on a gut level.

This isn’t some old or inaccessible concept; it’s universal. It applies to all fiction, from arthurian legends, to hulking 20th century novels about suffering under communism, to Sonic the Hedgehog. That also means it’s very basic, but a good base still takes talent and deserves admiration. One figure in popular culture that has that talent is Mike Judge, known for Beavis and Butt-head, King of the Hill, Idiocracy, and Office Space. Today, we will be looking at the characters with which he covered each SSH rank throughout his career.

The Alphas

Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho

This character is often joked about as a premonition of Donald Trump. Tough it’s meant as a negative, there’s an unintended positive in there - excessive peacocking is a trait of alphas, but so are charisma, decisiveness, strength of character, people skills, leadership instinct, and loyalty to your group, and those are all traits of President Camacho.

Becoming a major character midway through the movie, he is the one who got the main character out of jail, as upon finding out he has the highest IQ in the world, he seeks to employ him to solve all of America’s problems - in one week. Despite the stupidity seen in the finer details, he shows the alpha traits that matter - knowing who the right man for the job is, employing and motivating him, fairly rewarding a job well done, doing all of that with zero hesitation…

The Gammas

Bobby Hill

The deuteragonist of King of the Hill, Bobby’s long run is marred by the occasional episode written basically out of pity, where they make him into a really good marksman or show him getting along with adult millionaires or celebrities. But despite that, he’s a fairly accurate depiction of a young gamma. He’s not dissimilar to Jimmy Valmer from South Park, as both want to be comedians, both are class clowns, and both are massive attention whores. Another accurate gamma trait Bobby has: he’s fat.

Speaking of young gammas specifically, he’s also impressionable. Gammas won’t have it in them to be good at much, so they will normally lock into one or two niche interests, usually those that require memorization and knowledge.

This shouldn’t be surprising. The more realistic the creator makes his characters, the more in-line with the SSH those characters are likely to be. And predictable, just like real men.

The reason so many fictional characters are difficult to identify, not only with regards to their SSH rank, but with actual historical individuals, is because they don’t exist. They’re all-too-often wish fulfillment on the part of the writers, who in Hollywood are predominantly Gammas.