Gammas

This article is an attempt to salvage something useful from a rabbit hole that must be filled in. I was introduced to the concept of the gamma by Vox Day1. Vox describes gammas succinctly and in context here:

The introspective, the unusual, the unattractive, and all too often the bitter. Gammas are often intelligent, usually unsuccessful with women, and not uncommonly all but invisible to them, the gamma alternates between placing women on pedestals and hating the entire sex. This mostly depends upon whether an attractive woman happened to notice his existence or not that day. Too introspective for their own good, gammas are the men who obsess over individual women for extended periods of time and supply the ranks of stalkers, psycho-jealous ex-boyfriends, and the authors of excruciatingly romantic rhyming doggerel. In the unlikely event they are at the party, they are probably in the corner muttering darkly about the behavior of everyone else there… sometimes to themselves. Gammas tend to have have a worship/hate relationship with women, the current direction of which is directly tied to their present situation. However, they are sexual rejects, not social rejects.

Some other aspects of the gamma personality type that Vox describes that I cannot find references for (and may only exist in video format for all I know) are:

  • Intense emotional pain when publicly humiliated resulting in unproductive spiraling
  • Of all male personality types, most similar to that of women
  • Tend to end up doing technical work and obsessing over the details of some particular subject matter (otakuism)

I am writing about this because I exhibit several aspects (though not all) of the gamma personality type, and because I believe there is a strong relationship between gammas and Being an Engineer2. I definitely did the obsessing over women thing when younger. I’m obsessed with certain foreign languages for no particular reason. My relationships with women are not good. 3

One of the conclusions I must come to if I consider myself to be a gamma, is that until I figure out how to not be a gamma and although I know I should contribute, my motivations are probably wrong4, and I may ultimately do more harm than good for any cause such as #ossasepia I join, after reading example after example of how they can poison an organization and must be ejected.

Some things I’ve started doing to try to break out of gammaism are:

  • working out (this gets me out of my head into the physical world)
  • writing humiliating articles
  • quitting listening to Stefan Molyneux podcasts5
  • quitting watching Vox Day videos and reading Vox Day’s blog6

Some things I’m planning on doing:

  • earn income using non-technical skills7
  • quitting reading Twitter
  • leaving the US - I find that speaking other languages puts me in a different mindset (this won’t happen for at least 2 years but I’m working on it)
  1. Is his blog a trap? I don’t know. He makes money through his own publishing company and through video game design, has been living in Italy for many years, and has been banned from Twitter. His blog is hosted on Google, but he apparantly has several backups and merely continues to allow Google to host it because “let the enemy pay, no retreat, etc.” I urged him to publish a gpg public key (which was kind of a gamma move considering he clearly knows about it based on the title of a song in one of Psychosonik’s albums - PGP), but he ignored me and with good reason because who the fuck am I. []
  2. I have read this article a few times, but I find it quite challenging to understand. Part of it is the terminology, another part is probably that a part of myself really doesn’t wanto to understand. Nonetheless the people in the Gamma and Engineer categories do seem largely to intersect. []
  3. Although I’m still married, I’ve figured out that the partnership idea was a scam, someone has to be in charge. I’m not entirely sure how to get out of my current arrangement. It’s going to be expensive one way or the other. []
  4. ego, narcisism vs. cause []
  5. At this point it’s become an addiction. People on his show are working through their problems, but I’m not. []
  6. I’ve gotten some great insights from him but I don’t have anything to show for it and I’m not getting anything new out of continuing to follow him. []
  7. Inspired by Diana Coman []

One Response to “Gammas”

  1. Hussard says:

    The biggest thing about gamma is that they lie to themselves and others. If that's your case, this is where you should start.
    You seem to have a good plan, I wish you the best

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