3w ago

alpha

117 comments

I'm an alpha male: barely able to keep myself running and likely to completely break down if I encounter something I'm not prepared to deal with.
- I'm a Google Beta.
  I am effectively immortal, but I will probably someday disappear without notice.
  
  Don’t worry, your features “will be incorporated in future releases of our latest chat client and our Gmail.”
  
  I was stable release several years ago. Now I have security issues but some folks still think I'm awesome.
  
  Just try not to leave the few remaining people who depend on you, up shit creek. Get a will.
  
  I'm a beta-lactam antibiotic.
  Good for many tasks, but rapidly becoming useless.
- Damn, too early of a release eh?
- And not suitable for public release, obviously
- I also have a memory leak.
- Limited release to the world.

It makes more sense when we assume it's software development terminology instead. Alpha means the software is immature and full of issues.
I am a release candidate male.
- Hello ladies, I'm legacy code nobody wants to refactor and is being slowly converted into microservices.
- I'm just a beta male... they doubt I'm ready for release... but I'm far more stable than any alpha male.
  
  What's the difference between beta and release candidate?
  EA doesn't know either.
- I too am a release candidate, but my marketing sucks.
- I am a minimum viable product male
- I’m barely a proof of concept then. Or minimum viable product. 🙃
- I'm an old version male. I'm out of date but stable and used by people who generally know what they're doing and don't want something new that'll likely blow up in their face.
- I'm Concord. Only out for a week and then swept under the rug like I never existed.
- I am about v4.1 right now
- Well, I am a god damn mess as a person. So I'm like pre-alpha. I guess that makes me a proof of concept, or maybe even a thought exercise.
- I think of myself as code-complete but not necessarily bug-free.
- I think I might be a vertical slice...

Imagine if phrenology caught on as the latest pop-culture dipshit trend.
"My bumpy skull means I'm preternaturally predisposed to be polygamous and misogynist, and I'm just looking for a girl who has a compatible set of head bumps."
"If you can't handle me at my alimentivenest, you don't deserve me at my inhabitivenest."
- Well, I've got news for you: https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/far-right-phrenology-physiognomy-spread-hate-1234808413/
- Clearly you've stayed away from 4chan and I commend you for it.
- Isn't that just sparkling racism?
- so I was in the UK's largest chain bookstore (Waterstones) on Saturday and I found a phrenology cat
  
  That's the cutest pseudoscience I've ever seen.
- 2dolychocephalic4me
- if our heads don't slot together like lego pieces the relationship isn't going to work out
- I'd get some good hammers and make a (possibly literal) killing as a retrophrenologist...

languages evolve, and the origin is nothing more than a curio today. People use the term "alpha" to mean a thing that exists in humans, even if it never did in wolves.
this thing is called by the rest of the population "being and asshole" and as such i find the self identification of those people very usefull and time saving.
- Shut the fuck up, omega
  No /s come at me mods
  (Not really though)
  
  Guys, can't we all just get along. You're upsetting the Gammas.
  
  Hhyeah yes Daddy Alpha, I'll be quiet for you UwU~
- ~~Does it exist in humans, though? I'm fairly certain that it remains pseudoscientific in humans as well as wolves.~~
  Oh, wait, I read point two. I stand corrected.

To be more precise, Shenkel's work was discredited by the collective efforts of numerous scientists studying wolf behaviour. Probably the most notable of these was David Mech. His book "The Wolf" was based on Shenkel's work, and his own research on wolves in captivity, and was really the work that popularized the "alpha" nonsense in the public mind.
After numerous studies of wolves in the wild failed to bear out these conclusions, Mech later concluded that his work was wrong, and got The Wolf removed from publication.
- Either you or OP wrote Schenkel wrong.
  
  OP is correct

As a lambda male, this doesn't faze me at all.
- Oh, hi Gordon.
- I, too, love Haskell
- I am the hope of the omniverse
  I am the lightbulb in the darkness
  I am the bacon in the fridge for all living things that cry out in hunger
  I am the alpha and the amiga
  I am the terror that flaps in the night
  I am Son Goku and I am a Super Saiyan!
  
  Get in there and eat that horse!

Just remember:
An alpha release is unfit for public use, contains bugs, is untested, unrefined, and is likely to crash and may cause system wide issues.
An alpha is the first step, the very basic of basics, an infant in terms of development.
If anything, be an Omega man.
- Ultimate power move: be both.
- The Omega you want to be
  
  The Omega you actually are
  
  The omegaman you want to be
  
  The omegaman you are
  
  This is fun. Let's play more.
- So it’s Walter Masterson.
  Got it.

Peter Gibson, the guy who discovered non-celiac gluten sensitivity, retracted his own study a few years later, but it had already become a fad diet, so it just stuck. That being said, there have been some studies that seem to confirm its existence, but the evidence is pretty thin. (To be clear, celiac disease and wheat allergies are 100% proven and can be reliably tested for).
- However, the gluten-free fad diet was actually incredibly beneficial for sufferers of celiac desease because it made gluten-free products so mainstream and really expanded what pre-made foods and snacks they can buy in stores.
  
  Sometimes, I have a friend with celiac who often sees "gluten free°" on menus to look down at the bottom of the menu and see "°not for people with gluten sensitivities"
  He calls it "Becky gluten free" because Becky doesn't know what gluten is but she doesn't want it in her body.
  
  My dad joined a local celiac group in the early 2000s not long after his sister developed celiac through pregnancy and his doctor suggested he start the diet out of an abundance of caution. At the time there were about 10 people in the group local to a city of ~250k. They'd swap menu hacks to get safe(ish) food while out and about and trade recipes. Then some specialty stores started carrying more safe stuff as the fad was starting to gain traction and it definitely went mainstream when mainstream groceries and restaurants started officially offering safe options. Needless to say, that gluten-free diet support group no longer exists.
  Most interestingly, his other sister tested negative on the celiac blood test and neither I nor my dad have ever had that test done, so there's a good chance we're in the clear after all.
  I can't remember now why I felt compelled to share this, or how it tied into your comment but I hope it's at least interesting!
  
  Not really though, because it led to many places and cooks not taking it that seriously. Becky won't have any idea there's a little gluten on the knife and cutting board, but a person with celiac definitely would.
  
  True, although I met a girl with celiac early in the gluten-free fad who claimed that she couldn't trust a lot of restaurants' gluten-free options because a lot of them weren't actually gluten-free. Restaurants were just chasing a trend that they didn't fully understand. Things are much better now, but I think early on a lot of restaurants were treating gluten-free like the Atkins or Paleo diet, not an allergy.
- A lot of people's gluten sensitivity is actually a sensitivity to glysophates.

Screw alpha males, I'm an alpha woman with a thing for omega soft guys. 🥰
- I'm a male Bonobo, please keep me in line.
- omega soft
  I can definitely manage that.
  
  Omega soft
  The next step on the Charmin scale those asswiping scientist bears are striving for.
- Isn’t that just called a domme?

Don't "alpha males", as they describe themselves, typically prefer submissive women?

Rudolph Schenkel (yes really)
What? What is weird about that name? Maybe I'm too German native speaker to get this.
- I think probably you're too German. It's kind of a goofy name from an English point of view. And, for clarity, we don't necessarily generally think German names are particularly goofy.
  Either that or I'm missing what the guy is referencing.
  
  Thanks for your perspective.
  For a moment I was wondering if it's the similarity to the Israeli currency Shekel, but that doesn't make sense to me either.
- Schenkel translates to “deer fucker” in german, I dunno I’m just making this up
  
  "Thigh", actually :-)
- I don’t get it either. It’s not like he’s called Wanker or anything.
- I was thinking maybe because of Rudolph the red nosed reindeer, being kind of the alpha of the reindeer herd? No idea, really
- Isn't Schenkel thigh in German?

I'm an alpha male. If you study me in captivity I will display downright unnatural behavior.
- Despite all my rage, I'm still just a rat in a cage.

If you were a (regressive, anti-science) female that believed this, wouldn't you have to be a "beta" wolf in this fictional world?
- Thats the funniest part about this belief. The pop version is not even accurate to the original research, just a gross misinterpretation. The original bogus hierarchy started with the alpha couple, who are supposed to be the only reproductive couple of the pack. The rest of the population was simply defined by feeding hierarchy, who ate first. This might sound plausible but it only makes sense when you live in a fenced enclosure and there's only like 8 of you, no den space for offspring and you can't leave to find non-family mates. But then people made up a bunch of zodiac style personalities for this shit, and they're just as scientific.

The dude from the Scorpions also studies wolves?? When he's not rocking you like a hurricane?
No wait, that's Rudolf Schenker.
- Every time I see this band mentioned I can’t help but think of the terrible album cover for virgin killers. That shit is like a stain on my brain that I wish I could clean.
  Don’t google it. Please trust me on this one. Could get you put on a list.
  
  What the actual fuck? Now I feel like I had this identical experience like a decade ago, and totally blocked it out. Gross.
  
  Clapton did one of those too. Dude is a POS.

Alpha, beta, sigma, all just types of prison removed. Scientifically speaking.

the study is so stupid for anyone who takes it seriously. I however enjoy the tag it birthed on Ao3
- I just kinda associate it with smutty werewolf novels at this point

I wonder if this discourse sounds hilarious to a Greek person wondering why Angloids keep referring to themselves by letters of their alphabet.

Carrots improve eyesight...nah, just military misinformation that is now a staple for parents to get their kids to eat their carrots
- Vitamin A is crucial to eyesight and night vision though
  
  Entirely offtopic but you're not by chance the same ryannathans that's involved in the 2009scape project are you?
  
  But not everyone can make vitamin A out of beta carotene. That's why some vegans have eye problems

The alphas in question

Someone needs to tell all the authors involved in the wave of trash urban fantasy books that flooded the market a while back, using this to write werewolves. (True Blood, etc.)
- Oh A/B/O is just a genre now. Blame fanfic, mpreg, and primal fetisists

There are species that do have leader types in the social hierarchies though. Gorillas for example, or orcas.
- The problem is that you can't use info about wolf hierarchies to draw conclusions about human hierarchies. You can't even use info about extant primates to draw conclusions about humans.
  
  But, but... Apes together strong?

I've heard this debunk a lot over the years, and I don't disbelieve it, but is it not the case that one or two animals (wolves or otherwise) in a group will be the "bosses" or something close to being dominant over the others? Is all of that internal power struggling we see in groups/families of animals not really what it seems? Or is the "alpha" stuff different from that? Or does it only apply to wolves, and "alphas" do exist in other animal species?
Yours, confused and uneducated,
u/58008
- The behaviour initially exhibited and observed were of wolves in captivity (think prison). Once they were observed in the wild, the theory fell apart. Caged animals act differently, just like people.
- https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-the-alpha-wolf-idea-a-myth/
- You can sorta see the alpha thingamajig in hyenas. The chick with the biggest clit gets a possy of white knights trying to please her.
  But it's not obligatory. Dudes just chilling together and biting asses can still happen without a chick to lead them on.
- Different social animals have different social structures. Wolves generally live in family units, led by the parents. Wasps and gorillas have complicated group politics, with alliances, betrayals and backroom deals. Some primitive ants have a 'might is right' system, with the strongest becoming the queen and fighting off challengers. Most ants have a highly democratic system, with decisions made using chemical 'votes' (cast by the workers; drones and queens don't have a say).

TIL!

Did Schenkel deliberately make up that alpha shit (which would justify calling his paper "bogus") or was he just bad at research?
- From what I've heard it's just bad research. He looked at family units and thought the father was designated as the leader due to size and strength but really he was just a dad.
  
  I was also under the impression that the captive wolves were in mixed- that is forced- packs.
  All the fighting that was observed came from that rather than any sort of natural behavior.

117 comments