The internet is a cesspool for men who hate women. It seems as though their whole lives surround their hatred of women: constantly looking for a female celebrity or politician to mock, a teenage girl to body shame or groom, or to degrade literally any other woman doing anything. Men on the internet who hate women fall into two categories: involuntary celibates – or incels, – and alpha males. While both incels and alpha males see women as subhuman objects, they are uniquely separate in how they act and are generally perceived online.
When you think of an incel, your mind may wander to a 30-something year old man with a neckbeard on Reddit – the majority of people on the internet tend to avoid this type. While the online incel community is vast, and extremely dangerous, I will be focussing on their alpha male counterparts. These alpha males, similar to incels, are a popular internet joke. However, these men have created dedicated fan bases, mostly made up of angsty teenage boys and lonely adult men, and these influencers, unfortunately, live up to their name. The most popular alpha males have millions of followers from around the world, who hang on to their every word. Most of them can be found on a podcast, talking in circles about how all women are inherently “evil whores”, and are only valuable if they are “vapid virgins”.
These men make themselves seem aspirational: they’ll talk about how much money they have, how strong they are, and how many women they’ve slept with. They promote this rhetoric of being a “high value man.” Their idea of a “high value man” goes to the gym everyday, he views women as objects, and owns luxury cars. Recently, a man on TikTok went viral for sharing his 3 a.m. morning routine in which he showed a faceless woman serving him, dressing him, and cleaning up after him as if he was an infant. This video is the pinnacle of what the “alpha male dream” is. A man who makes himself out to be this hard working guy, when he relies on the labor of women to actually get things done. How much of an accomplishment is waking up at 3 a.m. if you’re not even going to put on slippers or cook for yourself? The video has currently amassed over 4 million likes, and although the majority of the internet is making fun of him for his excessive morning routine, barely anybody is speaking out about the actual underlying issue of misogyny.
Perhaps the most infamous alpha male is charged sex trafficker and child rapist Andrew Tate. I remember being in high school, and hearing boys fawn over this man and tell girls how much they agree with him. His influence on teenage boys and young men is unmatched. Although he did not singlehandedly create a generation of depraved and violent men, he did at least inspire them in some type of way. These men are dangerous. They openly admit and brag about the violence they have committed against women and girls, and actively encourage other men to do the same.
50% of young men ages 15-24 claim feminism makes it more difficult for them to succeed. This statistic was taken from men in “manosphere” spaces, which are saturated with alpha male content. Men blaming feminism for their lack of skills and talents is not a new concept, though it serves as the foundation of rhetoric these influencers spread: Women are to blame for men’s failures. For men who claim to be highly intelligent, they never accept responsibility for their own personal shortcomings. Women are to blame for male loneliness, (certainly not because men have systematically oppressed women, and now the one time in history women don’t have to rely on them, they are no longer of use, or because they treat women like a subspecies!), women are to blame for the male suicide rate, and most importantly women are to blame for why they aren’t having sex.
Alpha male influencers are a danger not only to women, but to society. They promote actual crimes, harmful rhetoric, all while making themselves out to be victims of a “backwards, feminist world.” The damage they have made has taken us back so far, and the imprint they left on young boys will continue to stain the future.