When the Rage-Volcano Erupts
In which we are provided an example of one aspect of the Gamma's behavioral pattern.
One thing that can be very hard to believe, or to accept, is the extent to which a Gamma in a rage spiral will continue to double down, and double down again and again, until he reaches absolute bottom in the eyes of his local hierarchy. I’ve witnessed this on sports teams, on college campuses, in corporate offices, in social settings, and, of course, on the Internet.
But it’s normal behavior for Gammas, and although they don’t exhibit it often, they will, sooner or later, be triggered into erupting in a rage-volcano, often by something that seems so minor to everyone else that it can even obscure the direct causal relationship between the trigger and the behavior.
This is why it’s always vital to either eject or carefully ring-fence the Gammas in your organization to prevent them from doing significant damage when, not if, they are triggered into a rage spiral. This is absolutely vital and I’m not exaggerating the importance of doing this, because in the past six years, I’ve ejected two Gammas showing signs of instability from two different projects; one of them subsequently turned out to be literally murderous and killed his wife in a rage.
So, it probably won’t surprise those of you who witnessed Elwin Ransom’s public performance in the comments to yesterday’s post that his banning from Sigma Game was not the end of the story, as 11 minutes later, I received the following email.
The commenter on your Sigma Game thread that you just banned was me. I have been a reader for close to two decades, and subscriber to both Castalia series since they started. No longer.
Now, obviously it’s totally fine if a customer wants to stop buying from a company whose products he no longer wants. That’s not a problem. Anyone is perfectly within his rights to stop buying goods or purchasing services for any reason at all. But step back and think about how strange this reaction is when it’s described in general terms. Because the Gamma thinks he should not have been held accountable to the rules he was clearly violating on one Internet site, he is going to stop purchasing goods and/or services he has hitherto valued from an entirely different company that happens to be connected in some way to the individual responsible for the site that banned him for violating the rules.
In other words, the Gamma makes everything personal. Absolutely everything. Don’t ever forget that. It may not be personal to you, you may not even see how it possibly could be personal in any way whatsoever, but to the Gamma, you are now his personal Voldemort, Sauron, and General Woundwort all rolled into one personification of pure and unmitigated evil that must be defeated at all costs.
And the Gamma will never, ever, stop trying to expose you, discredit you, or otherwise take you down. Back when I permitted comments at Vox Popoli, a Gamma who had been banned for 7 years without ever once showing his face again suddenly popped up - under another name, of course - to take a rhetorical shot when he erroneously imagined his grand opportunity had finally presented itself.
This shouldn’t come as a surprise. Most Gammas are nursing grievances and open psychological wounds that go back to junior high, if not elementary school. A seven-year grievance is nothing for the average Gamma. So once you recognize that a Gamma has declared you to be his enemy, no matter how absurd or convoluted the reasoning he may have required to reach that conclusion, be aware that you’ve made an enemy for life.
Which, of course, is the real reason attractive women despise and fear these self-described “nice guys”, and why they so often tend to seek refuge in the self-serving Alphas and Sigmas who they know perfectly well don’t care very much about them. Because while an Alpha may break your heart, a rejected Gamma may well break your skull. With a hammer.
The SSH is more than just a powerful tool for making sense of your romantic life, leading a project, or managing an office, it can be a literal lifesaver.
Also, as I pointed out at VP, being “a longtime reader”, being “a supporter”, being “a subscriber”, being a “a backer”, or even being “your biggest fan” cuts absolutely no ice with me. In fact, to the contrary, if you are any of those things, then you have been here long enough to know that I have higher expectations of you than I do of some random drive-by commenter.
So please, behave accordingly, and with due regard for your fellow commenters.
This post has convinced me of my gamma-hood, or, more hopefully, of my recovering gamma-hood into delta-hood. It also reminds me that my father is a gamma, and how his gamma rage affected our family growing up.
Warning: gamma wall-of-text below.
Now, as an opening note: I and the rest of my immediate family love my father. He was never physically abusive to us and is often quite giving to those in his immediate circle. He was a good provider and loyal to his wife and children (AFAIK).
That said, my father has very frequent loud gamma rage outs whenever even the smallest thing in his world went wrong. For example, If his beloved television stopped working or cable went out, watch out! He would scream so loud the houses would shake, and wouldn't stop until it was fixed somehow. He would slam doors, pound tables, and then yell at all of us for the smallest thing. He rages like a thunderstorm and doesn't care who he upsets.
I spent many dinners in dead silence at a dinner table, terrified if I made one wrong move my father's rage would turn on me, and praying that the TV started working or whatever problem was magically fixed to make him be nice. We would all take turns either trying to placate him or hiding in our rooms from him; I became quite an expert at fixing his computer, which my mother and sister frequently thanked me for. When they moved to a condo in their retirement, a number of neighbors thought my mother was being physically abused (she never was) from when he would scream, bang, rage, yell, and sulk when the slightest thing went wrong.
He coached me in a number of sports growing up --- except that when things weren't going his way, he would get kicked out of games (again: kid's games) by officials for threatening them. Earl Weaver and Bobby Cox had nothing on my father. Or else he would get into fights with parents in the stands or opposing coaches. Of course this caused me huge embarrassment and shame, and I many times cried at games when this happened, thus embarrassing myself even more.
The short-term results of these gamma rages were that my mother, my sister, and I were completely upset and scared the rest of the day and usually the next. Astonishingly, my father, once the issue was resolved --- technology fixed, game over, problem solved -- he would instantly lose his bad mood, and act as if nothing had happened. And, importantly, never apologized. And when we remained upset or complained at him, he would say, "What did I do?" as if his giant sulking rage fest was nothing, and we were weak for being upset.
The long-term results for me were worse. As stated, I am a gamma, and I likely modeled my behavior on his. I, too, have the rage fests, and burned many bridges in the past. But his gamma rages also encouraged unhealthy, sickening addictions in me that I have only recently grasped and begun to handle. I would hide in my room or leave the house and use these addictions to escape his raging or else deal with my frayed nerves in the wake of his rage.
And once you use an addiction as an escape, it becomes habit. Hence why a gamma's self-delusion bubble can remain intact; if he's constantly escaping into his addiction fantasy world, his delusion bubble cannot be popped. I would bet that gammas constitute the most numerous group of males I find in the 12-Step groups I attend. We are all recovering from addictions we used to hide away from reality, preserving our gamma-delusion bubbles. (In Eugene O'Neill's famous play, The Iceman Cometh, set in a bar with alcoholics, one slow to boil fact comes out that each alcoholic is a secret king -- each talks with grandiosity about what they're going to once they leave the bar and how they're going to change their life, but they never do, simply returning to the bottle. )
And yes, this is a typical gamma wall-of-text post. For that I am sorry.
Being a Gamma is a curse. I am delta now (yay accomplishment) but the old feelings/reactions sometimes boil up and if looked at analytically are just complete nonsense. I envy the Alphas, Betas, and Sigmas and natural Deltas that don't have to fight those intrusive reminders of what one used to be but hey we all got our crosses. Best test to see if you've evolved past Gamma for me at least - do you look back at your stupid Gammadom reactions back in the day and cringe like the rest of Earth did at the time or do you attempt to justify them to this day? Best to treat it like AA - I will not Gamma.... Today. Easy does it and One day at a time.