If you are new here, the Socio-Sexual Hierarchy (which only applies to men) explained by Vox Day has had a lot of controversy around it and has been criticised, lauded and everything in between.
To be fair to Vox, he was always clear that his SSH was essentially a tool for generally understanding and predicting male behaviour in a social context and that it was fractal; which I think is a word that confuses most people and he might have got the point across somewhat better if perhaps less accurately by saying that it was contextual.
The point is that a guy who is generally an Alpha in most social situations might become a Delta in a situation that is totally unfamiliar to him.
The designation of Sigma has also gone viral to the point of almost absurdity, right up to people trying to ban the use of the word in schools.
There is a fairly exhaustive overview of the whole concept done by Sigma Frame that has some overall decent points to make, even if in some respect they miss the point, due to trying to retain a strictly “Christian” (still heretically Churchian to people like me) perspective, when in reality, the SSH is essentially silent on the topic of religion. The archetypes exist in any religious denomination of any religion under the sun you might care to imagine.
Anyway, the point I wanted to make here is that although it has already been noted that completely “pure” versions of each archetype don’t exist, because humans are messy, there is one aspect of the supposed would-be Alphas/Sigmas that I have noted over the years that is essentially the “chink” in their self-deluded armour.
What I mean here is that genuine Alphas, can and do have various weaknesses, and this is not news, everyone does, but there are certain types of “Alphas” that although would indeed be deemed to be alphas by most people, are in fact, mostly playing a role. A role they have convinced themselves of too mind you, to the point where they may even react unconsciously as the supposed Alpha they are; nevertheless, there remains an undercurrent of self-doubt.
I was recently asked by my friend Tony why I had referred to various people as Sigma-Gamma, Alpha-Gamma, or Omega-Gamma, and so on.
It is a difficult concept to get across, but he understood my attempts and defined it beautifully. Referring to two of these people, who may as well be polar opposites in many ways, yet also share some similarities he said:
It’s like they are both somehow performative caricatures of something… like their own, idealized versions of great men
And that hit the nail on the head.
Now, it was not performative in the rather obvious ways that someone trying to impersonate what they think is an Alpha, or whatever, can be. It was a subtler thing, like for example having a rule about never smiling in photographs taken in public. Or, on a recent podcast I saw, a rather well-known podcaster that seems relatively unassuming and calm, as he espouses relatively hardcore traditional values for men and women, stated he simply does not cry pretty much, ever, even when someone close to him dies. And yes, of course, that is generally true of men, but something about the way he said it set off my “this guy is forcing himself to try and be what he thinks the peak manly-man acts like” radar. I am sure he wasn’t lying, that he does not in fact cry, almost ever. Partly it can also be cultural, but there was an element there of insincerity. Some lack of real connection with his deeper self.
Of course, you can just think I am full of shit and just making assumptions without evidence, but that is not what I am doing. I come to these conclusions only after years of observation and confirming my observations to the point I can predict how these people will react, and do so in a way that goes “off-script” for their supposed archetype (which they tend to be very invested in.)
So, while I may not be able to give you a concise explanation with all the evidence, if you had 30 hours to review events that a specific person took over years of time, and then I can predict for you how they would react to X, Y, and Z in ways that contradict what most people would assume would be their reaction based on all the observations, and if I can do that repeatedly with different people claiming Alpha, Sigma (or more rarely Omega status) Or even who have just been labelled as such by others, then I would say that would be some solid evidence. Of course, I can hardly demonstrate that to you in a blog post, but I live that experience, and have been able to transmit it to others who bothered to try to confirm my observation, and they noted my predictions as correct too, so I know it is valid.
The difference, between what I would call a more genuine, or perhaps more “total” Alpha or Sigma, is a deep level of self-knowledge.
You know how Gammas inevitably recon they are anything BUT Gammas? That’s because at heart, the Gamma is the very antithesis of self-knowledge. These are men who avoid the truth about themselves the way most people would avoid pools filled only with radioactive, rabid, giant eels.

Sigmas in general are the ones with the most self-knowledge, which is why the opinions of others generally do not affect them very much, if at all. However, when you note a Sigma that repeatedly tells you how much the opinions of other people don’t affect him (and they generally don’t) but then has an obvious reaction when a specific point of fact about him is pointed out, accurately, mind you, not merely accusatorially, well… he may still, generally speaking be a Sigma, but let’s say he’s not a 100% DOC (Di Origine Controllata – That is, of the true 100% quality). And the same goes if he also pretends to not be affected by anything at all, ever, because pretty much everyone has something that pisses them off.
For me, especially 30 years ago, it was mostly being accused of holding views, or internal concepts that I absolutely did not, by people I generally viewed as at least moderately intelligent and/or capable. Today, 30 years later… eh, I realise the stupidity factor of even moderately intelligent and capable people is still waaaaay higher than my young and optimistic self used to hope for. And then Covid, and then the Ukraine war, and the Gaza genocide, and, and, and… has just made it very clear that the fault in my getting upset at their tragic misjudgment of my character or intentions, was the fault of my very own rose-tinted glasses, wild, wild, optimism about humanity as a whole, and some misguided desire of wanting to believe that, surely, if only I could lay out the facts before them… they too would be able to see…
So, today, if they are too stupid to figure out the basics, I will not waste any time trying to correct them or “help” them. But that is not to say I am unreactive to almost everything.
My daughter tells me enthusiastically about some absolutely trivial thing she did, or found out, or thought of at school, or some observation she makes that is probably obvious to bacteria on Mars on some level, and it could be easy to simply let it wash over me and not respond or react to any of it.
However, doing so would crush her enthusiasm for life, and as such would be a bad thing. I try to put myself in her young mind and think, why would she find this fascinating or interesting, and how did I think about it at her age? And as she is on the cusp of becoming a young woman, the pattern it paints is mostly still rather… well, as man, imagine being in a giant shopping centre of just women’s shoes. And having to follow your female relative around as she waxed poetic about every pair she wanted to try on, and did. It’s kind of like that. About 3rd level of Hell in Dante’s Inferno.
So I amuse myself by seeing if I can at all nudge her train of thought into something mildly more interesting.
“Oh you like the lacquer on those? I see… I think lacquer used to be made from tree sap. And possibly bug paste to give it colour.”
“What?!??!”
“Yeah, shiny bug guts under polished resin. Phenomenal stuff.”
“Wait… I don’t believe you, I’m googling it!”
“You know google is just a CIA Psyops to keep the truth from you, right? The truth is not in google. You need to find a book on lacquer printed before 1842. Original only, because they corrupt the digital and new print versions. Like Roald Dahl’s books.”
“I Don’t care about lacquer that much dad, and I don’t care who Rodney Doug was, or whatever.”
“Roald Dahl. He wrote Little Red Riding Hood, the story. You know, where she has a pistol in her knickers.”
“Oh DAD! Little Red Riding Hood didn’t have a pistol in her knickers! I know that story, remember, I used to tell you about it, when I was little.”
“Google it.”
“Oh come on, I…”
“Google it.”
(huffs, types in phone… reads…) “Wait… what?”
“See? Now what pistol do you think it was? Probably a low calibre, right?”
And so you see, terminal brain death narrowly avoided once more.
Of course, that’s my daughter and I love her. 99.99999% of the rest of the planet that tried to subject me to that, I would find an excuse to get away, or possibly murder them and get rid of the body, if they insist.
But my point is that Self-Knowledge is ultimately the total measure of a man. A man that truly, deeply, knows himself for example to be a coward, and say, accepts it, is someone that I have more respect for than one who fancies himself a hero, maybe even acts as one in many situations, but in reality, perhaps even not fully known to what extent even to himself, he is, in fact, a coward.
It’s not that I necessarily think of him as evil, or intentionally deceitful (though some are) it’s just that I can’t take him all that seriously when he clearly is not even familiar with himself at any real depth.
So, when considering the SSH and what generic category a man may fall in more than another, remember that not only is that archetype at least partially and sometimes almost wholly, contextual, but just like there are always more stupid people than you can possibly imagine, there is also just a lot more Gamma fragments in far more people than you imagine. Including… terrifyingly… possibly… yourself.
But the only way to know for sure, friend, is to actually look under the proverbial bed.
Then get under there, armed with a sharp knife in your teeth, swim down to the monsters under there, and face them.

Advice to Sub-Optimal Men
This Xeet prompted this post.
Note the 27,000 reposts, and in case the writing is too small, here are the 4 images the commenter “Myka” does not give any fucks about at all.
Now my general feeling on this sort of thing is that the men who whine about this just need to grow a pair. Or not, and die without reproducing, with any luck.
And of course that no man at all should ever reproduce in any fashion, or even have any sex, whatsoever, indeed ANY involvement at all with women like Myka. If men followed this sensible advice, within about a month, the entire world would be aflame with how all men are evil and so on. After about a year, feminists would have almost died out, and after a decade the only feminists left would be in mental institutions for the unfortunately insane.
But I am trying to be more compassionate and understanding to those men that have been already crushed by life, their single mothers, or whatever. Maybe you’re a short, hairy goblin with nothing going for you. And it would be unfair for me to simply tell you to “man up” if you understand that in the context of you being able to marry a supermodel not being possible only because of your lack of confidence.
So let me spell things out.
Absolutely you need to change what you can. Get fit, make sure you are always clean, dress better, shave or laser your over-hairy ass, improve your job prospects and career, and so on. Sure, do all of that, but above all, the ONE thing you absolutely CAN do is fish in your level.
As a man you should be able to be brutally objective. So first fix all you can reasonably fix. Then give yourself a fair rating.
Personally, even when I had hair, i never rated myself above a 7 or so, even if objectively I knew that for a not insignificant number of women I was definitely at least an 8 in looks. And in ambition and what I was doing in life, again, for any woman overly concerned about material wealth I have fluctuated from a 2 to an 8 and in some cases a 9, but any woman that understood my nature at all was more liable to rate me a 6 or at most a 7. What I always had in spades however was an unflinching dedication to simply be me. Regardless of what anyone else thought of it. And that, at least temporarily, despite all my other numbers being lower or even much lower, made me at least an 8 and often an 8.5 or even 9.
I provide all the different metrics because unlike men, women do not rate us simply on looks.
It is not a councidence that most of my girlfriends, and certainly all the ones I was interested in to some more or less serious degree were invariably rated at least as 8s by men that generally had been successful with women and often as 9s and rather often as 10s by all the men who had been more averagely successful with women. Many a time I have been told by literally dozens of co-workers from multiple companies, that I was “punching above my weight” and more than once at various large company Christmas parties I was noticed by literally the entire firm, including the owners who would act deferentially to me despite me being merely one of the several people at my level they employed.
I have literally had random strangers stop me and a woman I was with in the street to congratulate me for the beauty of the woman I was with. And even today, I get friends who, without in any way saying this to “get in my good graces” rave about my wife.
I am not telling you this to depress you or show off.
I am trying to explain to you an important point that if you can internalise it will aid you in your quest for a genuine, long term companionship, marriage and a family more than any other single thing you can do.
The reason I did so well, was because I correctly evaluated all my metrics and played to my strengths. And my strengths are absolutely real, forged in the deepest fire of personal self-knowledge.
I have turned down large amounts of money, very hot women, and all sorts of other things in order to not do anything that would compromise my own sense of integrity. So, bending to some temporary whim of a pretty woman was never in the cards for me. This, of course, has the effect of immediately seeing off pretty much any woman who is not a full blown psychopath/narcissist but has those tendencies. Their need for some form of manipulative control over the man (victim?) they select simply drives them crazy when faced with someone of my temperament.
On the plus side, normal women wired in a healthy way, tend to be attracted to that level of confidence (so do all the pretty but damaged ones, which brings up another set of problems we won’t go into here).
The point is that deep and true self-knowledge is always the key. That is step one. Step two is to improve all you can, but it is step three that is the absolute silver bullet insofar as one exists:
Look in your own range.
It would probably be difficult for a guy that is 5’5”, has the genes of predisposition to fatness, is born poor and has a single mother raising him, to have the same level of hard-headed conviction I seem to have been born with. And I absolutely believe part of it is due to my Aspergers, which does not present as such due to high IQ and the luck I had in my rather unusual early life. But the point is that if I had been born in that body but retained my mental attitude, I would probably have been comfortably married a lot sooner, have more children and my friends would rave about how kind and pleasant my wife is. And she would probably be a 6 or maybe a 7 at most. Because that is where I would fall overall if you removed the physical advantages I have.
But let’s say you are overall just a 2.
I actually know people like this. Literal cripples with disfiguring handicaps, no real money or any special prospects. And yet both the ones I know personally are happily married and have been for years. One studied hard, became a lawyer, made money, then travelled to the East and essentially “bought” a filipino wife, being brutally honest with her. He really is about a 2 and she is about a 5 or at most a 6. But his overall number is probably a 4. He is wealthy. And the difference between a possible 4 and 6 is his level of self-knowledge. When I first met him and we spoke a bit he simply stated exactly what I said above and his wife was present. They had been married and living in London for over ten years. He praised her for being loyal and helping look after him. Maybe she was more nurse than wife. Maybe there was a financial arrangement we know nothing of. But his wife did not look or present as miserable and neither did he.
The other guy is married to a woman that also has some physical handicaps. They clearly love each other, have been together for decades and she is a very kind and decent person no one can say a bad word about.
The point is that both men went after a woman within their own numbers.
As did I. And let me tell you that the search at the lower end of the pool, once you accept this truth, is FAR easier than at the “pretty” end of the pool.
The reason was well known to me even decades ago, as is evident by one of my very first posts back in 2007 in a now permanently parked ancient blog (Take note of the relevant image here.)
And has been known by men worldwide at least since the days if the crazy/hot matrix of the early 1990s.
So. Do not despair. It’s only 4 simple rules:
1. Fix what you can fix externally (looks, hygiene, clothing, income, etc.)
2. Chose who you are internally. Learn and know deeply who you really are, so no matter the situation, you will almost always already know how you will react to it. If you are mot how you wish to be yet, do whatever you need to do to become it.
3. Rate yourself honestly in all categories and hence in the overall number you are and then go fish in the pond of your own level.
4. Do not despair. Just correct any errors and persevere.
That’s it.
If you want more detail and context you might also want to get Caveman Theory, but honestly if you just do the 4 steps above, you will eventually succeed.
And never forget point n. 4.
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By G | 10 September 2024 | Posted in Caveman Theory, Caveman Theory, Female Socio-Sexual Hierarchy, Increasing Happiness, Relationships, Social Commentary