The Key to the Playboy Mansion

Do you really want to live a new lifestyle?

Many men will criticize the Alpha Male archetype.

They'll wonder, “Well, Rollo, I'm part of this group, and there's this wimpy guy. He doesn't seem like the most Alpha, and he’s not a very masculine guy, but all the women seem to swoon for him. I don't understand. What is up with this guy?”

Maybe it’s some emo kid in a band, or something like that. You know, the thin, wiry kind of guy, but like, a K-Pop star, for example. These guys are effeminate, and average men can’t understand how this guy is Alpha? He's not Alpha at all, but women are still drawn to him. Nine times out of ten, it's a situation that puts that guy into unique circumstances that conditionally make him the Alpha of the moment.

I use this illustration when discussing conditional Alphas: People ask me, “Rollo, do you consider yourself an Alpha?” I consider myself a sort of lesser Alpha. I'm certainly not of the maverick Alpha described in sociosexual hierarchies, but in given situations, I can be ‘Alpha’. Recognizing those situations is key to understanding the Mindset of Alpha. It combines situational awareness with an understanding of the difference between being a conditional Alpha and a more universal Alpha. Certain guys have this sort of natural gravitas. They can be Alpha in any situation, but even those guys are still subject to particular conditions.

If you’re in a classroom setting and taking a college course, the instructor might be a younger man. Maybe he’s in his late twenties or early thirties, and you take him out of that classroom, and he's just an average schmo. Women are unlikely to approach this guy at the clubs. He's essentially invisible. He might even be one of the 80 percenters. But you put him in the position of teaching the class, and everyone has to listen to him. Everyone has to follow his direction. That guy conditionally becomes the Alpha of that environment. Many young women struggle to explain why they find their instructor irresistible and attractive. Due to preselection and mate choice copying, other girls in the class will agree. They want to get with this guy.

But take that guy out of that classroom, and nobody gives him the time of day. The reason for that is that the conditions and authority he commands in that particular theater make him the Alpha of that environment. It touches on another point I’ve discussed, which is Command Presence – being an authority figure in a specific instance. If you've been in law enforcement, you likely understand the concept of Command Presence. If you're wearing a uniform, it signifies respect and authority. If you’re in a police uniform or your dress blues, you’re presumed to be able to direct people on what to do. In law enforcement, if you're in a uniform and you are a police officer, you're supposed to respect that police officer as an authority of the law. They teach this in police training: to assume that particular authority and command presence. In a crisis, people would look to you for guidance. They're looking to you for leadership in a specific instance.

Mate Choice Copying

The same can apply to other situations. It could be in a classroom where all the women do Mate Choice Copying. If one girl finds that guy irresistibly attractive in that particular setting, the girls around her will get off on the social proof that the one girl is giving to that guy, and they will want to copy her. If one or two girls find this instructor attractive in that classroom setting, the odds are that four or five other girls find him somewhat attractive as well. Mate Choice Copying evolved as a social force multiplier to help women accurately assess a man’s value. In our ancestral past, a woman’s intuition (her Hypergamous filter) about a man’s quality couldn’t be entirely trusted to assess his value. Solution? Outsource that decision-making process to other (hopefully allied) females in her peer group. If other women want to bang him, or have already banged him, or find him attractive, that’s often endorsement enough to trigger a sympathetic attraction response from a woman who’s still undecided.

In our modern era of social media and easily mimicked social and attraction cues, Mate Choice Copying can be a double-edged sword. A clever Cad can fool most of the girls most of the time.

But now let’s take our semi-hot teacher out of the classroom. He becomes average. He's no longer the master of that domain. That's a key to success regarding Alpha Mindset, understanding, and being situationally aware. Where are you at? Are you in your domain, or are you in some other realm where you must be deferential to people with more authority over you? And, again, that comes back to Frame.