Comment on It's ok, we sigma now.

• Akasazh@feddit.nl ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  There’s no wolf alphas in nature neither. It’s an old and debunked theory based on studying captive wolves.

  scientificamerican.com/…/is-the-alpha-wolf-idea-a…

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  • Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    To be absolutely clear to anyone who hasn’t read about this; it was debunked by the same guy who came up with it in the first place!

    The dude studied wolves in captivity, drew conclusions about their behaviour, then applied those studies to wolves in the wild and discovered that he’d got it all wrong. The behaviours that he observed in captive wolves were all stress responses.

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    • captainlezbian@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Because he’s a good scientist. He followed the evidence, ran a different experiment to test his findings, and followed the evidence again.

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      • Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Absolutely. He had the courage to question his own assumptions when they were challenged by new evidence. Everyone could stand to learn from him.

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    • Agrivar@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      So, what I’m hearing is that there are human alpha males… but only in prisons. That checks out.

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      • OutlierBlue@lemmy.ca ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        No no you’ve got it backwards. Those are just stress responses. Human alphas do exist but you have to put them in the wild with a hungry pack of wolves.

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    • caseyweederman@lemmy.ca ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      To be fair, the alpha male thing in humanity is also a stress response.

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      • fsxylo@sh.itjust.works ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Well then I’m alpha as fuck.

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    • VindictiveJudge@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Didn’t he also put a bunch of adolescent wolves together for that? It was basically a lupine Lord of the Flies in there.

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  • tooclose104@lemmy.ca ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I found this too be quite interesting:

    Toxoplasmosis and Wolves

    To me, this makes all the “I’m an alpha, like a wolf” bumble even funnier. Nah, you’re just a cat person with poop on the brain.

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    • Akasazh@feddit.nl ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      That is an interesting article, thanks for sharing!

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• GBU_28@lemm.ee ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Not joining the whole alpha thing but where does alpha get described as lone?

  Alphas are purported to be top dog but they still run with a pack

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  • captainlezbian@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    True. Though I’ll add, none of these people actually are leaders in their friend group or community. They think that being an aggressive ahole makes them a leader when real leadership tends to be about gently convincing people that they want to do what you want done or that they should do it anyways

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• MapleEngineer@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Call down, Nancy. I know. I was calling people who claim to be alpha, “weak ass bitches.”

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• Kalysta@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  What? Someone making sense about the social evolution of humans? Not on my internet!

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