DMT Beauty Transformation: Are You an Alpha Male or Just a Bully? Here’s How to Tell
featured Ian Stobber

Are You an Alpha Male or Just a Bully? Here’s How to Tell

August 31, 2019DMT.NEWS

#DMTBeautySpot #beauty

Are You an Alpha Male or Are You a Bully?

You don’t need to be an 8-year-old getting your lunch money stolen or a shy teen getting stuffed into a locker to know that the world is full of bullies. 

They’re all over the place — the jerk who wants to get into a fight after you cut him off in traffic, the patron who belittles low-paid waitstaff or the boss who micromanages employees within an inch of their lives. Somehow, these full-grown adults never really learned that bossing everyone around and subjecting them to terrible tendencies for their amusement gets less and less forgivable with every passing year. 

And if the first step to overcoming any obstacle is recognizing the problem, well, the problem for a lot of adult bullies is that they don’t yet recognize that’s what they are. If they’re ever confronted with the reality of what they’re doing, they’ll write it off as other people being just being too sensitive, or they’ll frame it as just being harsh but fair in their eyes.

While bullies can come in any shape, size or gender, one of the ways many bullying-prone men convince themselves they’re in the right is by assuming the mythical title of “alpha male.”

And while the term has positive connotations for many people, regardless of whether they subscribe to any other beliefs about wolf-pack dynamics, modern human society, unlike packs of roving canines who need to kill other animals for food, doesn’t rely on so-called alpha males to maintain its stability. 

Due in part to the invention of things like cooperation and democracy, humans are capable of getting by without an angry jerk whose breath smells like elk blood running the show at every moment of the day. 

RELATED: Signs You’re Not an Alpha Male

So if you go around describing yourself as an alpha male, there’s a decent chance that you’re actually a bully who hasn’t come to terms with his impulses to control and belittle other people. Don’t believe it? Let’s go over some scenarios. 

How to Figure Out If You’re an Alpha Male or a Big Bully

Example: Dominating a Conversation With a Date

You Think It’s an Alpha Move Because: Impressing women is one of the classic alpha male traits (somehow, alpha males are always straight). And, their logic goes, you can’t impress someone just by sitting there silently. That means the alpha male must be a guy who conveys how great he is in conversation — name-dropping, bragging and being funny are all on the table. He’s not going to be some beta male who just lets a woman talk all over him, is he? 

It’s Really a Bully Move Because: This may surprise you, but listening (and asking questions) is actually an incredibly sexy trait that a lot of guys overlook. Meanwhile, dominating the conversation, even if what you’re saying is funny or cool, will likely leave your date wondering why they bothered coming out. Prioritizing how you think you look over how someone else actually feels is a classic bully move to make. 

Example: Criticizing a Coworker for Doing a Bad Job

You Think It’s an Alpha Move Because: Ensuring the health of the pack by picking off weak links is one of the alpha male characteristics many guys love to mention. In a business setting — a much vaunted environment for the alpha — this can take the form of speaking out against mediocre or sub-par performances to ensure that everyone’s work is held to a high standard. 

It’s Really a Bully Move Because: Even if the self-proclaimed alpha male in this scenario is the other person’s boss, haranguing someone in front of their peers is a horrible management style that’s more likely to lead to them quitting than getting their act together. The bully is all about show — appearing to be better, appearing to be in control. If results were what was most important, this guy would use one or more private conversations to deal with the issue, not a mass email or a meeting. 

Example: Complaining to a Salesperson

You Think It’s an Alpha Move Because: If there’s one thing that defines beta males, it’s getting stomped all over. No matter who it is doing the stomping, betas are used to letting someone else be in charge, even if it goes against their wishes or desires. In everyday settings, that plays out as letting people get away with bad service or rude treatment. Being an alpha male, however, means not putting up with that kind of stuff. This guy will call out anyone making him wait, bringing him the wrong order or otherwise forcing him to settle for less than his expectations. 

It’s Really a Bully Move Because: People in low-paying menial jobs have it hard enough as it is without adding frustrated and demanding customers to the mix. Getting loud and aggressive in public over a minor issue is one of the worst examples of toxic masculinity. Even if you think you’re being relatively diplomatic about it, there’s a good chance you’re coming off a lot angrier than you realize. Unless the employee is being explicitly rude to you — and even then, there’s a good chance you’re misinterpreting someone who’s burnt out and struggling as an insensitive jerk — it’s best to approach such an interaction with as much politeness as you can manage. 

RELATED: Being Rude to Waitstaff — and 7 Other Relationship Red Flags

Example: Being a Dick on the Road

You Think It’s an Alpha Move Because: Asserting your dominance in car form gives you a sense of primal power. Cutting people off (or shaming people who cut you off), aggressively honking or giving the finger are just some things on the list of ways to punish people for supposed misdeeds. And given the potential consequences of bad driving, shaming people for their screw-ups and carelessness could get it through their thick skulls that they need to take driving more seriously once and for all. 

It’s Really a Bully Move Because: Unless you’re in a sports car commercial, driving sucks. There are lights every few feet, the road is crammed with a million other people who don’t care about you and the possibility of injury and death lurks around every corner. People are doing the best they can, and there’s a gigantic difference between reckless endangerment and a bit of indecision. But a lot of road aggression isn’t a choice so much as the inability to just be chill about stuff. Putting your own emotions, instincts and anger first and notions of politeness or understanding second? Let me do a quick check … oh, that’s a bully move! 

What Is an Alpha Male, Really?

What is an alpha male? At the end of the day, it might not be anything. The scientist who invented the term has since admitted it might not actually even exist in wolves to begin with. 

Instead of worrying about how to be an alpha male, or where you stand in a ranking of most to least dominant, ask yourself whether you’re secretly being a bully. Are you constantly putting your own needs and feelings ahead of everyone else’s? Are you prioritizing how you look during a problem-solving process over whether a problem actually gets solved? 

If you’re grudgingly answering yes to those questions, congratulations! Acknowledging the problem is step one when it comes to solving it. The work of de-bullifying yourself might not be easy, but it has begun … and that’s something the bullies still bragging about being alphas can’t say for themselves.

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Ian Stobber, Khareem Sudlow

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