Alpha males: Hollow bluster, Mister!

Why are we suddenly hearing so much about Alpha Males? In a nutshell, it’s because this label has become a profitable marketing gimmick and male insecurities have been thoroughly commodified, courtesy of the internet and late-stage capitalism.

'We are the hollow men/ We are the stuffed men/Leaning together/Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!'

These lines from T S Eliot’s poem The Hollow Men are believed to be a response to the Nietzschean ideal of the Übermensch, the Overman, an aspirational model for all men who operate outside society’s moral-ethical boundaries. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

More than 100 years after Nietzsche’s death, the German philosopher has given way to Andrew Tate, a former kickboxer and alleged rapist, while the Übermensch has devolved into the Alpha Male. Just as the idea of Übermensch was once popular among powerful narcissists (Adolf Hitler, notably) and garden-variety bigots, the Alpha Male identity has also been embraced by tech billionaires, Internet personalities, content creators, and a whole lot of young men. Unlike the gentlemen’s clubs preferred by their counterparts from the last century, however, they hang out in seedy pockets of the Internet collectively known as the Manosphere.

Yet, despite all these updates, the ridiculousness alluded to in the lines above has remained very much intact. Consider, for instance, the origins of the Alpha Male theory.

The idea is believed to have been first popularised by the 1970 book The Wolf: The Ecology and Behavior of an Endangered Species. In the book, American biologist David Mech discussed the sexual dominance and authority exercised by aggressive male wolves in a pack. He referred to these individuals as the “alpha males” and the theory attracted significant attention in subsequent media coverage and pop culture. Soon, it was extended to the supposed sexual favours and power enjoyed by aggressive men in human societies.

Apart from the small problem that wolves and humans are not altogether similar creatures (wolves do not waste their time listening to the likes of Tate, one hopes), the proponents of the theory also ignored the fact that Mech himself later debunked it.

His earlier work, including the theory of alpha males, had been based on observing captive wolves, and the unnatural habitat made for spurious inferences. When he finally had the opportunity to observe them in the wild, Mech realised that wolf packs were mostly structured around typical family units. More experienced members of the pack, typically parents, were in charge, and aggressive qualities did not count for much.

Dismayed by how his erroneous theory had been co-opted by promoters of toxic masculinity, Mech tried to take the book out of print. His publishers did not agree, unfortunately. The book was a bestseller, after all, and insecure men were too large an audience segment to be ignored back then, just as they are now. Or as they always have been, actually, because for as long as there have been men, they have been insecure about being man enough.

This “enough” cannot be defined or quantified, which keeps it ever-aspirational, just out of reach, and always under threat.

As Khushi Rajeev, a London-based behavioural psychologist explained for this story: “All boys experience feelings of inferiority in childhood and the teenage years, but when these feelings persist and become overwhelming, they can develop low self-esteem well into adulthood. To compensate, some may adopt a superiority complex—projecting dominance or control to mask underlying insecurity. A misalignment between one’s self-identity and societal ideals, especially gendered expectations, can trigger what Alfred Adler (the Austrian psychologist) called “masculine protest”— a reaction against perceived weakness.” This masculine protest or superiority complex, however, has been a cultural fixture since the time of scriptures like Manu Smriti which provide rules about rigid birth-based social hierarchies (cue, enter caste), right down to 19th-century philosophers in Europe, and popular discourse in the 1970s America. So, what has changed now and why are we suddenly hearing so much about Alpha Males?

Just another commodity

In a nutshell, it’s because this label has become a profitable marketing gimmick and male insecurities have been thoroughly commodified, courtesy of the internet and late-stage capitalism.

The preachers of Alpha Male ideology today are not culture warriors, despite what they would have their audience believe, but mere businessmen looking to maximise their profits. Young men form their naive customer base and the aspirational nature of the Alpha Male archetype lets people like Andrew Tate sell courses about everything from how to get sex, to freelancing, and crypto-trading.

It is also why the PR machinery works overtime to set up entirely unremarkable and exceedingly boring films like Animal (2023, Sandeep Reddy Vanga) as some sort of a stand against feminism. It is a trickle-down hierarchy of snake-oil salesmen, disguised as alpha men, with YouTubers like Elvish Yadav farming outrageous views for easy monetisation, and “manly” influencers selling self-help guides, protein powders, how-to-pick-women playbooks, gym memberships, betting apps, and much else besides.

Unlike in the West (see box) the Manosphere in India is rather decentralised. Instead of being relegated to specific digital spaces like the TheRedPill subreddit, 4Chan, and MGTOW (Men Go Their Own Way) pages, the Manosphere is everywhere on the mainstream Indian internet.

It is out there in full public view in the comments section of Instagram Reels where women are told to go back to the kitchen, and in YouTube Shorts that show male lawyers warning fellow men about the legal pitfalls of romantic relationships. The desi Manosphere is mainstream enough for movie directors to justify domestic violence, and for men on X (formerly Twitter) to prioritise chanting #not-all-men after each new case of sexual brutality against women. Since the algorithms running the internet, and social media platforms in particular, are meant to reinforce our preferences, it is easy for men to stay in online bubbles that validate their insecurities and refuse to grow up.

However comfortable it is to believe that the idea of Alpha Males is a foreign concept imported via the internet, it is naive to think that it can be countered with technical regulations or restrictions on certain individuals. Others have already derived similar comfort from ascribing the “Western import” tag to pre-marital sex and alcohol consumption, just to name two. They have also tried all the stop-gap solutions involving bans, regulations, and loud outrage. It did not work very well for them, and it will not work well for those who want to address the Alpha Male narrative. On the contrary, it might be a better idea to restrict our outrage and refrain from giving alpha male mouthpieces the counter-cultural credibility they crave so much. It could help us take away the marketing capital from the label and make it much less lucrative as a sales pitch.

Cringeworthy much?

In any case, the Manosphere, governed as it is by the short attention span of young men and their finicky definition of “cool”, has already started to move on. Conversations on Reddit, for instance, especially in Indian subreddits like r/menslibIndia, r/IndiaSpeaks, and r/onexindia increasingly consider the term “Alpha Male” cringeworthy. Elsewhere on social media, the identity has splintered into Chads, Sigma Males, Edgelords, and other labels that may provide a stable identity to increasingly unstable men.

As traditional institutions such as arranged marriages and joint families lose ground, more women enter the workforce, gain financial freedom, and some amount of sexual autonomy, male insecurities can only be expected to become sharper and more urgent. The real work ahead now lies not in countering individual influencers or terms, but in helping young men realise that true strength comes from embracing their full humanity, not from pretending to be made of bravado and bluster. Only then can they step away from the “hollowness” about which Eliot was so prescient and become whole.

The author is an alumnus of IIMC and his work has appeared in various Indian as well as international publications. His book on Indian millennials was published recently by Aleph.