This revelatory explanation by a Gamma male was so unexpected, and yet so illuminating, that I felt it worth bringing to the attention of the VP readership as well:
Gammas think they are Alphas.
It sounds insane, but it’s true. A man who knows his place and sticks to that place is usually left to his own devices. Pay tribute to those above, demand tribute from those below, and if a man should disagree with either his own or your relative position in the hierarchy, then conflict will ensue to determine who is correct. It’s a simple enough formula and it occurs frequently, if not daily, during the course of a man’s life. Men tend to be very diligent about ensuring the proper order of things, but once that order is established, there is an element of stability. The victor may be magnanimous to the defeated. In turn, the loser is expected to acclimate himself to his new position.
Gammas introduce instability to this hierarchy. They refuse to accept their station, nor do they propose to increase it through deeds and experience. Like women, they come to expect a certain station in life and feel wronged when it is not provided for them. A common Gamma thought would be “why should he be the leader and get all the glory for himself?”
The part that I thought was particularly insightful was this statement: “Doubtless, thinks the Gamma, the leadership position was earned through subterfuge and oppression since that is how he would obtain it.”
A leadership position earned through subterfuge and oppression? Strange, for some reason that sounds strangely… familiar?
Chris Gerrib made a demonstrably incorrect statement yesterday. He also implied that he had read the entire book, pointing out that he had bought it and talking about details from the first chapter. I called him on his statement and asked him a simple, straightforward yes/no question that would have indicated it to be not only false, but disingenuous and knowingly false.
You made a false and disingenuous claim about what “this SJW shit” is. Do you admit that “this SJW shit” is what “gleefully subverts gender roles” and “the subversion of the dominant white male paradigm”? Yes or no?
Instead of answering the question as per the clearly posted rules of the blog, Chris then went on to post NINE additional comments evading it. I gave him three opportunities to answer, and when he would not do so, I informed him that he would not be posting any more further comments here until he answered the question. This was his not-entirely-unexpected response:
Vox- I’m done talking to you. If you don’t want me to comment here, get me banned. Otherwise, fuck off. If you think that’s conflict avoidance, whatever. Why I should give a damn about the opinion of a one-name wonder is beyond me.
He is done talking to me. He is done talking to everyone here, now that he is banned and spammed. Furthermore, I note that Chris Gerrib is a liar, a deceiver, an intellectual coward, and a near-textbook example of an insecure, passive-aggressive, conflict-avoidant gamma male, who turns evasive and runs away rather than even take the risk of being publicly forced to admit that he was wrong.
What was fascinating about his behavior yesterday is that at Alpha Game, we have been discussing precisely this pattern of behavior of men who belong to this socio-sexual demographic for the last two weeks, and helping various gammas try to break the pattern. Gerrib’s behavior fit it to a T; it was so predictable that several of us were discussing it before he even finished the customary Gamma routine. As one observer said, it was like watching a textbook example in action.
Notice the various elements of the socio-sexual hierarchy at work:
Alpha: doesn’t mind straightforward conflict, will not tolerate disrespect, is comfortable with direct and physical conflict. The political is not personal.
Gamma: can’t tolerate disagreement or criticism, bitchy, cowardly, puts himself in situations he is not equipped to handle. The political is personal, the technical is personal, everything is personal. Runs from direct confrontation.
Here are a few of the typical Gamma behaviors identified by an ex-Gamma that were obvious throughout the comments.
In the past year you can’t recall a single serious online discussion you were wrong about anything.
In the past two years you can’t recall one discussion with any friends or family in which you were wrong about anything.
When finally shown you are wrong about something it is devastating, you remember it for months or years, avoid that place or people, and consider your time there a failure as a person.
You routinely lie about small, personal, matters knowing you can get away with it.
You think width of knowledge is more important than depth of knowledge.
If you start to lose at any game you find a way to quit if you can and hope to save face by degrading the game or the other players.
If someone defeats you at a game or competition you can’t look them in the eye afterwards and try to avoid them if possible.
The two points that I thought was the most telling yesterday were those that concern routinely lying and width of knowledge. From the very start, Gerrib deceitfully struck a pose of being more knowledgeable about the book than he actually was before eventually exposing his own deceit.
“Well, having bought the book based on the author’s reading of the first chapter at Windycon, I read stuff like this. Chapter 1 was pretty active, ending with a shoot-out and a bad guy trying to use some kind of mind-control device.”
“if you had gotten as far as the end of chapter 1, you would have found out that the women who cause the first gunfight were both Asian.”
“I have not read past chapter 1.”
This behavior makes no sense to the non-gamma male, but to prefer everyone knowing that you’re deceitful to publicly admitting that you’re wrong is the quintessence of gamma. Gammas know no honor because they reject the concept, they consider it foolish. And there is no place in the public discourse here for those who intentionally seek to deceive their fellow commenters.
This is not the first time Gerrib has behaved in this manner. S1AL noted:
That’s a truly amusing statement coming from someone incapable of admitting when he is incorrect about any fact. Really, tell me again how there were no black people in a pirate movie before 2005… or how the Declaration of Independence is the “founding” document of America. But hey, now I know it’s not just me to whom you won’t admit being wrong.
The Rules of the Blog exist for several good reasons, and one of the primary ones is to foster honest, civil, and rational discourse. Those who demonstrate that they either cannot or will not engage in such discourse will not be permitted to continue commenting here.
When you are having an argument with someone and it appears you are wrong, the most common belief and defense is that the other person simply doesn’t understand what you are saying.
When discussing matters with someone and you think you are maybe, possibly, being shown to be wrong, you start to get snarky, crack lame jokes, and immediately try to change the subject.
If someone holds an opinion contrary to yours, and you don’t think you have a good defense immediately to hand, you start to look for unrelated ways to disqualify the other person as being less than knowledgeable about the subject, even going so far as to disqualify them as being a good person or sometimes even a person at all.
Definitions are tenuous for you and words can be redefined at leisure during a discussion. If someone quotes the dictionary and it disagrees with your definition they are arguing unfairly and the dictionary is wrong.
The rest of the list is at Alpha Game. I’m mostly interested to note how often we see this very sort of behavior from trolls and pinkshirts, which tends to confirm the more casual observations of their low socio-sexual status. See the recent post, A Rabbit Visits, and note the similarities even though this was sent to me several days ago.
Keep in mind that this is a former Gamma explaining his previous mindset, it’s not an outsider’s interpretation.
I know nothing about this “Pastor Driscoll” except for what I’ve read at Dalrock’s. And I would bet considerable money that he’s a Swaggart/Bakker debacle just waiting to be uncovered and exposed:
I’ve referenced Pastor Driscoll’s sermon Men and Marriage in several recent posts. This is the sermon to watch, or better yet, read, if you wan’t to understand what I was describing in The only real man in the room. In this sermon Driscoll opens with the prayer I quoted from in Fragging Christian Headship:
Father God, I pray that our time would be pleasing to you, that it would be profitable to us, Lord God, as well. I pray for those men who are here that are cowards, they’re silent, passive, impish, worthless men, they’re making a mess of everything in their life and they’re such sweet little boys that no one ever confronts them on that. I pray for the women who enable them, who permit them to continue in falling, those who are mothers and sisters and girlfriends and wives. I pray, Lord God, for those men who are chauvinists, those who are mean, who are brash, who are rude, who are harsh, who, Lord God, think they are tough when in fact they are Satanic. God, I pray for those men that they would have the courage today to not fight with a woman, but to fight with you, to actually find their rightful place in creation, that they might receive a good rebuke so that they can become honorable rather than dishonorable sons. God, I pray for my tone, I pray for our men, and I pray for the women who are listening in. I pray, Lord God, that they would know this comes from a heart of passion, deep concern, and love. I pray, Lord God, that we would think biblically, critically, humbly, and repentantly, and that, Lord God, there would be dramatic life change by the power of the Holy Spirit in the name of Jesus, Amen.
If you read the sermon, you will see that Driscoll repeatedly makes it clear that when he uses terms like dishonorable, Satanic, cowards, passive, impish, worthless, jokes, losers, imbeciles, fools, etc. he isn’t just referring to a few “peter pan” men who don’t have jobs and/or aren’t married. He is talking about the husbands and fathers who sought out the church lead by Driscoll, the men who brought their wives and children to the sermon.
…most of you men don’t know what masculinity truly is
Driscoll defines the six types of worthless men he regularly comes across. They are all either cowards or chauvinists and bullies. And again, Driscoll is addressing this not to men outside the congregation, or even a smallish subset of the men in the congregation. He means nearly all of the men in the congregation:
Were this a women’s conference, I would not call you all idiots and imbeciles and fools, that you’re a joke, okay? But you men, this is where it needs to go. You’ve been glad-handed and buddied up and positive thinking and you’re a winner and Jesus loves you and you can do better. And I’m telling you, you’re a joke. And the real men in the room know it and they see it. And maybe there’s one woman that you fooled and she doesn’t see it because like Eve, she’s deceived.
The hallmark of a real man, a real Christian man, according to Driscoll, is looking around at the other men in the room and knowing that they are pathetic compared to you. This is of course exactly what Driscoll is doing throughout the sermon. Again, this is a sermon about men and marriage, and married men are Driscoll’s primary target. While he makes a short stop in Genesis for background, the inspiration for the sermon is one single verse, 1 Pet. 3:7
Likewise, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel, since they are heirs with you of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered.
The disparaging of the men in the room goes on to the very end of the hour and seven minute sermon. I’ll repeat that I highly encourage you to read the transcript. There is simply too much to quote, as the stream of invective against the men in the room is non stop.
This guy is the epitome of the wolf in sheep’s clothing. He’s a wannabe cult leader, not a man of God. Reading his words, I can scent the stink of feminist-appeasing, neighbor’s-wife-seducing sulfur. The joke, the evil joke, is him.
No man who runs around posturing as “the only man in the room” in this manner is a Christian leader. He’s an Alpha male, a pathological seducer who can’t stand the fact that there are women in the room who prefer another man to him. I can just about guarantee you that he would react very, very badly to me if I merely walked into his church with Spacebunny and stared at him. His sort of Alpha absolutely hates Sigmas because a) we tend to marry attractive women and b) we see their bullshit for what it is.
Dalrock’s close was beautiful: “Miss Flowahs got Driscoll’s message, and no doubt so did the women in attendance.” His real message, not the fake sermon given as cover.
I never trust a man who pretends to be talking to God when he is actually talking to the people listening.
The growth in site traffic was less spectacular than in 2013, and we saw a 1.5-million pageview month instead of the two-million one that I speculated might be possible, but traffic was nevertheless solid and both VP and AG continued to enjoy increased readership, with an overall 19.7 percent increase in pageviews over the course of the year. And, if anything, it’s picking up, as December 2014 was up 38 percent in comparison with December 2013.
In 2014, Vox Popoli had 11,236,085 pageviews and Alpha Game 4,457,537 for a total of 15,693,622 Google pageviews. To the left is a chart showing the monthly traffic for both blogs over the last four years; even without Alpha Game, VP has grown from 11,383 to 34,809 average daily pageviews. Combined, Vox Popoli and Alpha Game are now running at a average rate of 47,343 daily pageviews. Not quite 50k, I’m afraid, not even if they are converted to the slightly more generous WordPress metric. As for the running annual totals, they are as follows:
I doubt we’ll be able to maintain a 2-year doubling rate for a third straight year, since that would require nearly 11 million more pageviews in 2015, but one never knows. And speaking of nearly 50k daily pageviews, I would be remiss if, for no particular reason at all, I did not continue with a certain comparison that was repeatedly brought to my attention in previous years. This is, of course, the comparison with the hugely famous and massively popular Whatever, formerly the biggest and best-known site in science fiction. The following chart shows the comparative blog traffic over the last six years as measured in Google Pageviews.
Interesting, is it not, that Whatever’s traffic has now declined below the point that mine was when it was declared irrelevant on the basis of its paltry traffic by McRapey’s fans? So, have we seen Peak McRapey? It’s hard to say, as he’s increasingly moved to Twitter, an ideal medium for his unique combination of fabrication, snark, and self-promotion.
I found the 2014 totals to be particularly amusing in light of this clueless post by an SF Pinkshirt named Nalini Haynes who went public with her strategy to starve the Supreme Dark Lord: “My website averages well over 600 visits a day. Based on comments from other fanzine people, I’m guessing that’s more readers than VD’s blog would get even when he provokes a shit storm. Let’s deprive him of the traffic.”
Apparently it didn’t work so well. Anyhow, 2015 promises to be an interesting year at VP and hopefully a much better one than 2014 was. While the Hugo debacle was entertaining and the Castalia launch went much better than anticipated, I didn’t finish Book Two, Alpenwolf didn’t finish First Sword, and there were some very difficult situations being experienced behind the scenes by friends and family. If, at any point last year, you sensed I didn’t give even the smallest damn about the various public contretemps, you were correct.
But we’ve got two new partners and an exciting new project in the works at Alpenwolf, both First Sword and Book Two will be out this year, and we’ve got a number of new writers, new bloggers, and new books to announce in the next few months at Castalia. So, thank you for your interest (even if it is no more than morbid curiosity), thank you for your support, and I hope you will come along for the ride in the new year.
I’ve written many times about how the Gamma males who write SF/F have absolutely no grasp of human socio-sexuality. Interestingly enough, aside from those writing in the Romance ghetto, the same is largely true of female genre writers:
In her latest Pottermore update, Rowling writes how she’s often forced to crush the dreams of fans who nurse strange feelings for Hogwarts’s sexiest Slytherin.
Read the rest at Alpha Game, although beware, there is a Woman Defending All Women Against All Implied or Perceived Criticism on the premises.
In other news, Our Friend Damien is having trouble letting go. Unfortunately, writing about me appears to be the only fiction he can manage. This will certainly amuse the Evil Legion of Evil, who are probably the only ones who truly understand exactly how much winning a Hugo Award means to me.
Damien Walter @damiengwalter Theodore Beale / Vox Day being told the news he came 6th in a field of 5 at the Hugo awards.
MikeBrendan @MikeBrendango That was just beautiful…
Damien Walter @damiengwalter the definition of poetic justice.
Space Bunny @Spacebunnyday .@damiengwalter blocks @voxday, but can’t stop talking about him. So typical of sad #SJW s #lol
John Scalzi @scalzi Everything is a victory!
Space Bunny @Spacebunnyday I can only assume that @damiengwalter’s latest writing grant didn’t come through.@voxday
Tim Wood @Magister_Wood It’s how the rabbits deal with unrequited love. #SJW #lol
Mark Fox @swiftfoxmark2 Wouldn’t have anything to do with not doing what he said he would, right?
I understand it intellectually, of course, but I don’t think I will ever truly grasp the inability of rabbits to understand that not-rabbits genuinely don’t think like they do. I very much doubt that they will ever understand that my finishing 6th of 5 was the best possible outcome short of actually winning, which was never going to happen.
And it’s informative to see @SFReviewsnet favoriting this tweet. It appears we’ll know where not to bother sending books for review. But at least if you’re looking for Pink SF/F, you’ll know exactly where to go.
Unlike the Left, we of the Right don’t despise our families and prefer the company of drunken strangers to them. But that doesn’t meant there is never an amount of tension involved in a day of unusually close proximity with a group of people to whom we are related, but with whom we don’t necessarily have all that much otherwise in common. So, it may be helpful to review last year’s Holiday Survival guide:
If you are a man:
Remember that the women are putting in a lot of work and are feeling a lot of stress. This is not the time to remember things at the last minute or lament how things were done differently when you were a child. Avoid throwing curve balls.
Don’t tell her to relax. She’s not going to do so anymore than you are during a hard-fought basketball game. Holiday-hosting can perhaps be best understood as a competitive sport for women, even if the only competitors are in her mind.
Ask her if there is anything you can do twice per day, once in the morning and once in the afternoon. Simply having someone willing to run out to the store once or twice, if necessary, can save her considerable time and reduce tensions.
Pour yourself a glass of wine as soon as it gets dark. Offer her one. She’ll probably need it.
Don’t let her get away with snapping at you or anyone else. The objective is to be helpful and considerate, not a doormat.
If you are a woman:
Try to remember that it’s a celebration, not a competition, and the world will not end if a particular dish is not served or something doesn’t go exactly the way you planned it.
The only person who can ruin the holiday for yourself is you. In fact, the only person who is likely to ruin the holiday for everyone else is you. Don’t be that woman.
If someone is taking pictures or video, just smile. Drawing additional attention to yourself by complaining and protesting looks far more ridiculous than any bedhead or lack of makeup does.
And don’t miss the opportunity to be the hero. During the holiday season, I always reflect upon the wisdom of my grandfather, arguably the most awesome man who ever strode the planet. I once told him, as he was washing the dishes in the kitchen while everyone else was in the dining room listening to the women attempt to maximize their rare opportunity to talk in front of a captive male audience, that as the senior male member of the family, it wasn’t his responsibility to clean up.
He looked at me, scotch in hand, then raised an eyebrow and indicated the football game that was on the television in the corner of the kitchen. “Responsibility?” the Lacedaemonian said.
Have a very happy and grateful Thanksgiving, everyone. We all have much for which to give thanks to the Almighty God, if only for giving us the strength to endure and surmount the challenges life presents us. And speaking of challenges, Spacebunny has followed up the main course with pumpkin pie, pecan pie, and chocolate fudge. Where to start? And more importantly, when to stop?
Over at Alpha Game, there is a discussion of a new survey showing that marrying a non-virgin indicates a 21 percent reduction in the likelihood of HER marital satisfaction compared to a woman whose sexual experience is limited to her husband. And marrying a promiscuous woman (defined as 10+ premarital partners), reduces her marital satisfaction by 58 percent. This should settle, once and for all, any question concerning the observable fact that men strongly prefer to marry women with less experience.
And before any female readers resort to their usual “but what about the mens” response, do read the survey.
This is an interesting test of whether feminism actually concerns itself with what is observably good for women or whether it is more concerned with defending the sub-optimal decisions of certain women.
It started with a seemingly innocent series of five emails, which I distilled down to part of one:
Can you give me a quick, couple-paragraph summary of the overall AG philosophy? I think that a large part of it is that it’s about not being/appearing weak. What exactly is weakness? Is kindness weakness? Is gentleness weakness? Or is it more that reticence and insecurity in your decisions and beliefs are weaknesses?
I addressed it. Two days later, I addressed another one:
Basically, “how dare you not be interested in me when I was interested in you?” Even though I had made it very clear that I was not interested, he had assumed that I still was. He did the right thing, I guess. He didn’t give up when I turned him down. But it was pretty revolting, rather than attractive.
I reached some conclusions and promptly lost interest:
Anyhow, the point is that outside of sex, women aren’t very interested in men and their interests and men have even less interest in women and theirs. It is a simple and straightforward observation, there is nothing wrong with this perfectly normal state of affairs, and the better you understand it, the more easily you will get along with the opposite sex.
But then the man about whom she was writing sent me an email. Which is when hilarity ensued.
I’m the guy from the story. For what it’s worth, I read through both the post and the extensive comments section. I was absolutely shocked to find this post, since Eliza never mentioned to me that she intended to make this story public…. seems like some of the people posting had some misconceptions about me and how I acted — and after reading Eliza’s piece, I can hardly blame them!
She reacted angrily by outing the gentleman by linking to his social media accounts and managed to out herself in the process. It turns out that the ever-so-curious Eliza is a writer named Eliza Hecht who was doing research for what one presumes will be another hit piece on the Androsphere.
This is a bittersweet pain every parent knows. To see our children grow up healthy and tall and strong is both the fulfillment of a heartfelt desire and a heart-ripping loss. It’s charming, of course, to see how upset the little girl to learn that her cute little brother with his cute little smiles is not going to stay exactly the way he is, the way she loves him. But I find myself wondering how much of the misinformation that is passed on from mother to son and from sister to brother concerning intersexual relations stems, at least in part, from this natural desire for things to remain as they are.
