We may be entering an era when the romantic fortunes of the Renegade Alpha reach a zenith. A culmination of culture shocks will magnify the appeal of the nonconformist cad, energizing a state of illicit affairs which could last for twenty years before the pendulum swings back into the camp of traditional alpha males.
Who is the Renegade Alpha? It helps to know the context within which he lives. An elegant description of the male socio-sexual hierarchy exists deep in the CH archives.
Make no mistake, at the most fundamental level the CRUX of a man’s worth is measured by his desirability to women, whether he chooses to play the game or not. Pussy is the holy grail. That is why the obese, socially maladroit nerdboy who manages to unlock the gate to the secret garden and bang a 10 regularly is an alpha male. And that is also why the rich, charming entrepreneur who, because of an emotional deficiency or mental sickness lives mired in parched celibacy, is not an alpha male.
Due to this enduring confusion about what makes an alpha, I submit the following system, in the form of a handy chart, to help clear the air. It hits on the three major factors influencing male rank — how hot are the women he can attract, how strong is that attraction for him, and how many of those women find him attractive.
Some readers unhappy with this reductive (and thus clear-eyed) partition of male sexual worth balked at this definition, claiming it was circular. But great truths often distill as tautologies, which is why the CH definition of the alpha male is so sweeping in its scope and yet unassailable in its detail.
The blogger Vox, an esteemed member of the realtalker shock troops, has his own delineation of male status based off of the original CH socio-sexual classifications, which he has said is a refinement of the original, but which CH guardians of the Good Word of Game say amounts to an aesthetic rewording of the primeval texts. Vox’s male ranks could easily superimpose onto CH’s ranking system, because the CH hierarchy is not, as is commonly assumed by readers who have barely skimmed the ancient writings, a stark dichotomy separating alphas from betas, but rather is a continuous SPECTRUM running the gamut from the lowly omega dregs to the zero-point-one percenter super alphas. Within that spectrum there is room for every male socio-sexual rank, including the mysterious Renegade Alpha, which Vox names the Sigma Male.
Sigma: The outsider who doesn’t play the social game and manage to win at it anyhow. The sigma is hated by alphas because sigmas are the only men who don’t accept or at least acknowledge, however grudgingly, their social dominance. (NB: Alphas absolutely hate to be laughed at and a sigma can often enrage an alpha by doing nothing more than smiling at him.) Everyone else is vaguely confused by them. In a social situation, the sigma is the man who stops in briefly to say hello to a few friends accompanied by a Tier 1 girl that no one has ever seen before. Sigmas like women, but tend to be contemptuous of them. They are usually considered to be strange. Gammas often like to think they are sigmas, failing to understand that sigmas are not social rejects, they are at the top of the social hierarchy despite their refusal to play by its rules.
Lifetime sexual partners = 4x average+.
In equivalent CH terms, then, the Sigma Male would fall somewhere between a Greater Beta and a Lesser Alpha. An ample supply of cute girls are attracted to him, and some of those girls want to be with him exclusively. He oozes badboy allure, and he’s been known to make a girl or two cry in despair, and perhaps to have had his heart broken in return. So he is, by most men’s paltry standards, a successful predator of poon. (A noodle-armed emo crooner fronting an indie band is a well-known Renegade Alpha archetype.) But he doesn’t have the broad social leverage that a traditional “leader of men” alpha male has at his disposal, and this somewhat limits the Sigma Male/Renegade Alpha from monopolizing the attentions of a large pool of 9s and 10s, or of enjoying the distaff fruits of a wide and deep social circle of admiring friends and accomplished business partners eager to play matchmaker.
However, that same outsider status and rule-breaking dereliction of the Renegade Alpha also frees him from having to live up to the expectations of an insular social group. This freedom is especially nourishing if that group is a cult of winners with an unforgiving, judgmental distaste for deviance from the norm. Oftentimes, the libidinous and romantic urges of a traditional alpha male are straitjacketed by the conventional demands of his peers, and he looks with envy upon the Renegade Alpha reclining with some starry-eyed scenester who didn’t go to Harvard but who loves to take loads to her pink hair-framed face.
Very loosely, the Renegade Alpha is a seducer of women first, and a leader of men second, if at all. Though in fact the two conditions are not mutually exclusive. A cad bounder who defies the rules can also lead a small contingent of men, although the sweep of his influence may be constrained by his chosen hedonistic lifestyle.
So what does the present American sexual market tell us about the fortunes of the Renegade Alpha? For one, this is his moment. He thrives in formerly stable cultures that are experiencing paradigm shifts which shake up the old rules and create disincentives to social cooperation. Confusion, ennui, distrust, discord, fear and uncertainty — these are the conditions that craft his playground of poon. Where there is emerging chaos, you will find the reign of the Renegade Alpha.
Probably the best historical example of this reality is Casanova, one of European history’s greatest womanizers who pursued his passions during the Age of Enlightenment, a time in the West of tumult and change, leading eventually to the French and American Revolutions.
Will something similar happen in our lifetimes? America today is also experiencing tumult, and a new dark enlightenment is set to crash the scene like an unwelcome guest, upending tribal affiliations and cherished beliefs alike. Something strange and frightening is a-blowin’ in the wind, and the Renegade Alpha is there to take your hand, comfort you in your time of need, lead you to a better place, arouse you with intimations of transcendental escape, seduce you, and evade rebuke under cover of urban anonymity and social atomization.
It’s no coincidence that the Pickup Artist movement, spearheaded in the 1990s by intellectual revolutionaries (yes, really), came to prominence when it did. The eroding culture was primed for it. Frayed social cohesion and rapid advancement in communications have allowed the PUA and his message to flourish. The PUA, a creature of his environment, is a specialized Renegade Alpha.
So the Renegade Alpha, or Sigma Male in Vox’s terminology, excels at exploiting cratering cultures and the tender, psychologically scarred minds that inhabit them. Societal collapse is his serendipity. The cri de coeur of broken souls his symphony.
When the actual collapse comes, delivering real pain to the old order and its pathetic servants, the Renegade Alpha will retreat from the scene, his services no longer needed by sufficient numbers to warrant his active, daily participation in the hunt. Post-collapse, the weepy, suddenly straight-thinking women will crave the firm footing of authorial alpha males and predictable beta males. The female desire for romantic excitement will be quenched by the real excitement of destitution, decay and doom.
Oh, he’ll always have a place at the pussy table. When the Leader of Men alpha males rule, the Renegade Alpha finds niches within which he can profitably work his magic, posing as the “outsider” who provides subversive entertainment in times of mundane prosperity and social comity. But under those conditions his numbers are necessarily inhibited by the checks and balances that are naturally emergent in a strong, high trust culture that believes in itself.
In weak, low trust cultures that have lost the faith… he dines tonight.
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