An “Alpha Male’s” Right to Reply

Sometimes a comment on a post cannot be allowed to nestle in the nether regions of a blog but deserves due prominence. So, when a certain Mr John Doe, fronted up and called me a wimp, I knew I had to be man enough to let his voice be heard. . . or at least be read! So, Mr John Doe, self-proclaimed alpha male. . . this is for you fella!

Who’s yer daddy?

The post that so offended Mr Doe, was The Great ‘Typical Alpha Male’ Delusion in which I criticized lazy journalists spouting the usual meaningless  psychobabble. The journalist described President Obama, during his visit to Britain, as ‘the typical alpha male, laid back and relaxed’.  I pointed out that if we look to the animal kingdom, where we have ‘borrowed’ the term ‘alpha male’, we find that they are anything but laid-back and relaxed! Now admittedly I went on to denigrate anyone who describes himself as an alpha male, as ‘a thoroughly unpleasant bloke who doesn’t have enough friends to tell him that his people skills stink’. I also added that they are usually ‘dickheads or bullies or both’. Now okay, I may have gone a bit far, but is that any reason to call me a wimp? It really hurt my feelings!

It distresses me to print the full assault but I’m powerless to resist the sheer force of this self-proclaimed alpha male’s argument. Here goes and while you read it, I’ll be lying down in a darkened room with a wet flannel over my eyes:

John Doe replies:

Hello,
As an alpha male who leads people and shags beautiful women, let me assure you we are quite relaxed (and confident)…your take on obama demonstrates an incredible lack of understanding which must result in extraordinary jealousy of people like myself
Good day…wimp!

I know it’s shocking, so please feel free to report it for mature content but  let’s do a little,  point-by-point analysis anyway:

1. Would an alpha male (by Mr Doe’s definition) have bothered to post a comment?
2. Would an alpha make have bothered to set up a ‘john doe’ email address and post under the name ‘John Doe’, unless of course that is his real name? Surely, John Buck or John Stag would be more appropriate?
3. Would an alpha male be scouring blogs for references to alpha males?
4. ‘Leading people’ is not necessarily a positive thing. It’s how you lead them and where you lead them that counts.  The Pied Piper led people too, or was that rats, I forget?
5. Does ‘shagging beautiful women’ prove alpha male status? Well alpha males in the animal kingdom aren’t too fussy. They will even mount other males. So if you are a true alpha male, is there something you want to tell us, Mr Doe?
6. The phrase ‘shagging beautiful women’ surely is exactly the kind of chauvinism that proves the point that men who call themselves self-proclaimed alpha males aren’t the nicest of chaps, as I pointed out in my previous post.
7. So by stating ‘we are relaxed’,  Mr Doe has either decided to speak for all of the other self-proclaimed alpha males on the planet, which seems a tad forward of him, surely they can speak for themselves or perhaps Mr Doe thinks he is more than one person.
8. Would a confident and relaxed person bother to reply in an aggressive manner? Confident people put others at ease. I don’t see any evidence here that Mr Doe has the ability to do this, unless of course, he is confusing confidence with aggression (i.e. over-compensating, usually for low self-esteem).
9. He complains about my take on Barack Obama, but at least I  bothered to use a capital letter for his name. Ah! That’ll be typing with one hand then! Or if you’re too “butch” to hit the caps lock, well that is a worry.
10. I described President Obama as having the ‘best of our human qualities of compassion, understanding, leadership and the ability to listen to other viewpoints without seeking to crush them’. How does this demonstrate a lack of understanding? I didn’t criticise Mr Obama, I simply stated that, thankfully,  he is nothing like ‘self-proclaimed alpha males’ or ‘alpha males from the animal kingdom’.
11. Apparently this lack of understanding leads to ‘extraordinary jealousy‘.  Well this demonstrates a lack of understanding because I think Mr Doe actually means ‘envy‘ not jealousy. To date, I have not met a self-proclaimed alpha male who provokes envy in me (or jealousy). Like everyone else, I view them with pity and contempt.
12. Uses the phrase ‘people like myself’, shouldn’t that be ‘people like me’?
13. Mr Doe then uses what I assume is the standard, but hardly relaxed or confident,  alpha male complimentary close of  ‘Good day. . . wimp!’. Yes, that show’s true leadership. . . let’s all follow John Doe! No! Not even on Twitter.
14. Finally, why the ellipsis (…)? What’s missing Mr Doe? Possibly the words ” I am really a self-deluded, cowardly”. Just a suggestion.

Following on from this brief discourse analysis, although Mr Doe may not be representative of the population of men with ‘self-proclaimed’ alpha male status, I do thank him for providing such a wonderfully rich datum which I suggest  provides tentative support for my original assertions. People who boldly proclaim to be ‘alpha males’ are really nothing of the sort.

P.s. Quite what this says about me that I bothered to dignify his comment with a response, I don’t know.

Read the post: The Great ‘Typical Alpha Male’ Delusion

The Tower of Babel & the Body Language Myth (55%-38%-7%)

Following on from my post about the 55% – 38% – 7% body language myth, it strikes me that if the myth was true – that words only account for 7% of any communication – why both learning different languages? It’s true that many people travel to far off lands and instead of learning the lingo, just speak more  slowly, more loudly, add an ‘O’ at the end of words, and gesticulate furiously. However, does this mean any bewildered local person gets 93% of the meaning? Of course not! Instead they can be 93% sure that the traveller was too damn lazy to buy a phrase book!

Now, imagine going to a lecture in a foreign language. Would you be able to discern 93% of the technical information from the speaker’s tone of voice and hand gestures? Afterwards, perhaps you could rent a foreign language DVD and switch off the subtitles and enjoy all the subtleties of the story.  And why aren’t mime artists the most highly paid people in the world? After all, they must be the best communicators. Why didn’t President Obama give his inaugural ‘speech’ through the medium of dance?

In each of these scenarios it’s obvious that the words account for much more that the often reported 7% of  communication. For if words are so unimportant, then we do we both to continue to use them? Why don’t we just grunt and point?  And how do ‘body language experts’ communicate the relative importance of words to body language? Do they ‘moon walk’ or communicate through the parlour game of charades? Goodness know they should for the sense they make, but no: they use words! And, it’s clear that what is at fault is the inability of some so-called ‘body language experts’ to put the proper value on words and actually read the bloody research they cite! Perhaps they were paying too much attention to the rustle of the pages or the book cover instead of giving due prominence to the printed word.

When we actually read the research by Albert Mehrabian that gave us he 55-38-7% rule we learn that body language and tone of voice have prominence over words only when we are forming an attitude about another person, that is, deciding whether or not we like them. It’s that specific. It’s certainly no antidote to the ‘Tower of Babel’ language divide.

Although, the statistics are often quoted out of context to falsely inflate the importance of body language in everyday communication, the research has important implications for first impressions. When plucking up courage to speak to someone it’s important to know that people pay less attention to what we say but more to the general impression we make. So, we don’t have to say something super-intelligent or offer a witty one liner or a cheesy chat up line. In the initial stages, it’s a smile that makes all the difference. Once you’ve ‘broken the ice’, words become more important. Even more important is that we learn to listen to them.

Links:

• Body Language Myth: My Previous Post
• Albert Mehrabian’s formula
• Things to do instead of obsessing over body language.
• Other body language posts

The Great ‘Typical Alpha Male’ Delusion

Commenting on Barack Obama‘s trip to the UK, it was interesting to hear a journalist refer to the President Obama as ‘the typical alpha male, laid back and relaxed’ which is exactly not what an alpha male is supposed to be!

The alpha male (in animal groupings) usually has to fight off aggressively his ‘young-buck’ challengers so that he can continue to shag anything that moves. Er. . . I’m not sure that this President would be too pleased with that assessment.  Also, imagine the alpha male in an animal grouping saying to the young aggressive contenders ‘Chill out! Relax’ before getting his head or antlers torn off.

Mr Obama may well be the most powerful man on the planet, politically, but thankfully he possess none of the typical alpha male qualities. When we use the term ‘alpha male’ to refer to ‘powerful men’ we are more or less saying they are ‘bastards’ in the symbolic sense of the word. When men refer to themselves as ‘the alpha male’ they are usually dickheads or bullies or both! Being the ‘alpha male’ is never a compliment! It usually refers to a thoroughly unpleasant bloke who doesn’t have enough friends to tell him that his people skills stink!

So please, just let go of this same-old  tired  ‘alpha male gender stereotype BS’ that we heard too many times before. Instead, let’s focus on the best of our human qualities of compassion, understanding, leadership and the ability to listen to other viewpoints without seeking to crush them. . . just as Mr Obama seems to be doing in the early stages of his presidency. We need models of exemplary human behaviour to aspire to, not lazy-ass ‘stock phrases’ from journalists who don’t appear to know their ‘alpha males’ from their elbows!