Alpha Participation Awards

[house_pundit]

We've all noticed the profusion of participation awards where everybody on the team gets a medal, everyone gets a ribbon for running in the race---or because they wanted to run but couldn't complete the course but at least they started. I don't think we've decided that just giving ribbons to people who cross the starting line is hurtful to people

Comments

[seawasp]

Odd, I find the whole Alpha stuff to be so... retro. I remember it most clearly from the much-reviled Phoenix Star Trek books (The Price of the Phoenix and The Fate of the Phoenix). It's old pop psych from (I think) evolutionary psych backgrounds.

It's been around a LONG time, someone's just revived the terminology again.

[johnkzin]

random question: are you the same guy who used to post as "sea wasp" on rec.games.frp* back in the hey-days of usenet?

[seawasp]

THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE!

And what do you mean "used to"? I STILL post there. And on r.a.sf.w and r.a.a.misc, for that matter.

[johnkzin]

heh. I haven't posted on usenet in forever. but, yeah, I used to read your posts (and reply to a few) back in the day. I had various identities around @prism.gatech.edu back in the late 80's and early 90's. I was also user@domain.org for a while in the late 90's and early 00's. But I haven't been a regular on usenet for ... quite a while.

Probably the more visible legacy of my time there was when Terry Austin started keeping a quote of mine in his .signature (I never figured out if it was good for my overall reputation to have him quoting me, or not). The quote was to the effect of: if you aren't using both your left brain, and your right brain, you've effectively only got half a brain. It came out of a conversation people had about logical vs artistic thinkers, and which was more valuable. My stance, as is typical of me, was balance between the extremes.

[johnkzin]

See, and, for me, "Alpha male" doesn't mean "dominant male", it means "big stupid jackass".

Alpha Male == Joey Buttafuoco or the jerk personality that Jesse Ventura portrayed when he was on screen for professional wrestling, and similar "brain fueled more by testosterone than blood" type people.

Dominant Male == is in charge, gets things done, and doesn't have to resort to being a bullying jerk in order to do so.

Perhaps one is just a more evolved and mature version of the other, but ... there's a very significant difference to me.

And, I would be insulted to be called an Alpha Male.

[riteturn]

I have no desire to be the Alpha. I detested jocks in High School. I just like to be treated with courtesy and mostly left alone. In particular I hate the self - caricature pin heads who like to fight for fun. My 3rd year of high school I had one who kept punching me on the upper arm trying to provoke me into fighting him. He was a football player and I never was a boxer. I must have warned him 30 times before one day the fool got on the stairs without looking behind him. I smacked him across the back of the head with my stack of books with everything I had. Not only did he tumble down the steel stairs but BONUS! he bounced off the landing wall and went down the next flight too. Put him in bed for three days, and his face was a billboard ad to leave me alone for a month after he came back.
Be aware. Get too grand-Alpha on the wrong Beta's ass and he can kill you just as dead as a whole pack of fellow Alphas.

[house_pundit]

I like to spar for fun. And that's the difference. The other guy is also in there for fun, or has otherwise chosen to be there.

Sparring isn't fighting, but it's a great substitute if you like that sort of thing and you're not a narcissistic bully.