Lexicon ·
alpha
noun
- Stated meaning
- A dominant, confident man at the top of a natural social hierarchy.
- Operating meaning
- A letter of the Greek alphabet used as a price point, since any hierarchy sold to an audience needs a lower rung for the audience to stand on while purchasing the program.
- Origin
- Mid-century studies of wolves in captivity, adopted by men's self-improvement forums and later by podcasts with a merchandise store.
- Synonyms
- alpha male
- Antonyms
- beta
The alpha was first described in captive wolves (opens in a new window), a group of unrelated animals placed in an enclosure and observed competing for rank. The researcher who popularized the term asked his publisher repeatedly to stop printing it (opens in a new window), on the grounds that wild wolves live in families (opens in a new window) and the one in charge is usually a parent. The request did not reach the forums in time.
The taxonomy has since expanded to fill the catalog (opens in a new window). Beta was kept so there would be something to escape. Sigma was added (opens in a new window) for men who wished to be at the top of the hierarchy while also declining to participate in it. There are now several letters in active circulation and each has its own thumbnail, with a lion, a red arrow, and a runtime over two hours.
The system is a funnel and the funnel is the product. The free quiz sorts, the email sequence explains what the sort means, and a program is offered to everyone who landed below the first letter, which by the design of the questions is nearly everyone who takes a free quiz. A taxonomy that placed most of its respondents at the top would have nothing to sell them.
Every one of these instruments asks, somewhere in the middle, whether the respondent keeps track of who paid for what. It is a trick question: keeping track is presented as the symptom, and the cure is a posture. I did not answer a quiz. I built a site with 3 forms on it, each carrying a cost field, a duration field and a column for her contribution that reads $0.00 on every one, and a panel at the bottom that counts how many of the columns balanced. Whatever letter that is, there is no course for it.