When Gammas Play Smart Boy

Snarky, passive-aggressive wordplay is always a reliable giveaway

When men refer to themselves as "alpha males", I hear that in the context of software, where alpha versions are unstable, missing important features, filled with flaws, and not fit for the public.

It would hard to be more Gamma than this; using the coincidence of term that is a meaningless label in one context with its meaning in another context as a means of attempting to denigrate those whom the label described.

I’ll show him with my superior word skills! And everyone will clap!

Note the intrinsic Gamma narcissism, as if what he hears is relevant to anyone else, as well as the smug and self-congratulatory tone of being a Smart Boy for recognizing that there are multiple definitions of the term “alpha”. Think about how stupid this sounds when other definitions are substituted.

When men refer to themselves as "alpha males", I hear that in the context of the stock market, where alpha versions are the portion of the return on an investment portfolio that can be attributed to the skill of the portfolio's manager rather than the performance of the market.

And, of course, if Alphas were Smart Boys, which they are not, they might just as well respond with an equally stupid correlation.

When men refer to themselves as "alpha males", I hear that in the context of astronomy, where alpha versions are the brightest stars in their constellations.

“Alpha” also means “the brightest star in the constellation.”

Although variants of the literary aphorism been attributed to everyone from Oscar Wilde to Stephen King, it was actually Arthur Quiller-Couch, who in his 1914 Cambridge University lecture “On Style,” first advised against this sort of smug and self-congratulatory wordplay.

If you here require a practical rule of me, I will present you with this: ‘Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it—whole-heartedly—and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.

Gammas never kill their darlings. To the contrary, they often attempt to offer their words as “quotes” even when absolutely no one has any intention of quoting them. Such as, for example, the unforgettable case of what became the Euphoric meme.