this post was submitted on 28 Sep 2025
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The guy who wrote that whole "alpha male" bullshit regrets it. Because he was wrong. And has been working to undo that damage for years now.
If it wasn't him, it would probably be someone else, or some other toxic thing anyway, it's just the label they've given themselves to justify being assholes
I'm pretty sure they're talking about the wolf biologist not the manfluencer
I know
He did so not long after he did his alpha male thesis, I think 3 years, but the damage was already done.
Basically: when wolves who don’t know each other are being kept in captivity, one becomes "the alpha" and leads the pack. But in reality, wolves hunt in family packs, whose sizes depend on their prey. Wolves in areas where they hunt moose have bigger families than those hunting deer. This just means that one, two or three litters stay with the family until they find their own. The "alpha" is just the dad.
And lone wolf is nothing to aspire as those without a pack are because they are excluded by the others, be it because they are unstable and dangerous, ill and insane or any other reason. Lone wolves howling at the moon are crying because they are miserable. Much like people that consider themselves lone wolves.
The lone wolf is the one hunting rabbits and rats, eating carrion. The strong one hunts big game with his father, his mother, and his brothers and sisters, and feasts.
Socially, we have way more in common with wolves than with any of the primates.
[Laughs in bonobo]
Sword fight!
Reminds me of Charles Darwin regretting On the Origin of Species because it was used to justify race science and eugenics.
But the alpha male thing is different in that it was discovered that status isn’t really a thing in wild Wolfpacks. The observations from this study used wolves in captivity. The alpha wolf study has been debunked.
Then again: the bulk of humanity lives in shitty captivity of economic shackles 😅.
That's ultimately what the eugenecist is selecting for, whether they know it or not. A better slave; an Eloi.
But evolution is actually real though...
I should have been more specific. He specifically regretted adopting and popularizing the phrase "survival of the fittest" in On the Origin of Species because European imperialists used it to justify genocide and the Atlantic slave trade.
He wrote The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (which emphasizes cooperation and compassion as crucial for human evolution rather than competition alone) in part as damage control but the cat was already out of the bag.
These atrocities would have likely happened regardless but he certainly felt guilt over contributing to their justification.
I gotcha... I guess my point was that at least the original thing was based on reality. The "alpha male" wolf thing ended up not even being real.
Meh, it was a woefully inadequate explanation of social behaviour by not acknowledging that it was specific behaviour to a very specific environment. "Survival of the fittest" is also woefully inadequate as an explanation of evolution and creates all sorts of misunderstandings. He would have had an easier time teaching the concept without that phrase.