Hopefully my previous post was self-explanatory and/or amusing without context, but I’d hate to alienate anyone based on it, so I’ll give it some context anyway (and because I lack anything Christmas-related to post).
The whole pick-up artist subculture is, in addition to being creepy and unethical, profoundly disconnected with human reality. Nothing exemplifies this as much as their alpha/beta/omega “Greek system” of ranking people. The terminology is copied from the popular conception of wolf pack hierarchy–itself discredited, as we now know that the “alpha” male and female of a wolf pack are in fact the mother and father, and the “lower-ranking” wolves are their offspring who don’t interbreed because their pack mates are their siblings and parents.
When applied to humans, the concept makes even less sense. Generally it refers to how successful one is supposed to be at dating, but whiny wannabe pick-up artists use “alpha” (or alpha alpha, alpha alpha alpha prime, facial alpha, and so on, creating new terms as needed) to refer to anyone who is more successful than them at anything–up to and including Austin Powers. It’s a useful system for lazy narcissists; one can classify oneself as a beta and thereafter blame your lack of success on your beta status (ascribing other people’s successes as due to their alpha status and therefore unattainable by you) while simultaneously being able to look down on anyone you don’t like as an omega.
But, even if you limit the terms to the “dating market,” the silliest part remains: The attempt to rank the entire population of the world from most desirable to least. Every pick-up artist and hanger-on believes that there are a small class of people that everyone of the opposite gender (same-sex attraction doesn’t exist in their world, and neither do people outside the gender binary) wants to date, and that anyone who dates anyone outside that group is settling and would switch in an instant, abandoning their girlfriend, boyfriend, or even husband or wife, if they had the opportunity.
As I said, silly. You can’t pinpoint a person that everyone in the world wants to date any more than you can create an ice cream flavor that everyone in the world wants to eat. Even among your group of close friends, people who share common interests and attitudes, odds are you’ll find at least one or two significant others who you would never want to date, but your friend seems to like quite well. And that’s before you account for obvious factors like age: Hopefully a 40-year-old’s ideal girlfriend or boyfriend isn’t an 18-year-old (and hopefully no one over 18 is aspiring to date a 17-year-old, but that’s another kind of creepy).
So Roissy’s tests are simple self-obsession. He’s taking the sort of person he would want to date and makes a blanket declaration that these people are dateable and everyone else undateable; for men, people like him are dateable and other people (you know, the normal kind who don’t kiss people who obviously don’t want to be kissed) are undateable. A lot of unintentional subtext surfaces in the question choice and scoring. Notice his resentful tone towards “alpha” women: You’re doing well now, but someday you’ll get what’s coming to you! Perhaps Roissy realizes that most “alpha” women (and women, period) wouldn’t want to date him. Also observe the lack of questions about men’s physical attractiveness. Because that would be gay.
For a closer analysis from someone who actually had the fortitude to take Roissy’s tests and tally up her scores, check out the female and male tests at The Pervocracy.
So half of my test is simply my version of Roissy’s test, taken to absurd extremes. I like Doctor Who and don’t like coffee drinkers, so obviously tea-drinking Whovians are objectively desirable. Of course it doesn’t even work that far; even individuals rarely have tastes as rigid as the Greek system requires. Blue-eyed redheads with ambitions of being desired by me, take heart: It all depends. Or, you know, don’t take heart, since I’m married.
The other half is simple nonsense. Roissy’s test is so disconnected from reality that you might as well ask random questions and assign them random point values. Explanations of specific points of obtuseness are below the cut. Clothing: I have nothing against Goths, but neither will I miss an opportunity to mock them. Hipsters may award themselves +0.
IQ: It really is a meaningless concept.
Cars: I drive a Mazda, so non-Miata Mazdas can also award themselves +1. However, my mother rented a Miata for her 40th birthday, and since then I’ve associated them with womens’ midlife crises and found them profoundly unsexy. If you need an explanation of why the Nissan Cube is ugly, you may really be undateable.
Books: I’m a classicist. What can I say.
Kitties: Kitties!
Party behavior: This is standard PUA nonsense, carefully choreographing their behavior in social situations as though people were actually judging you based on how quickly you approach or from which direction, and indeed, as though people actually noticed these things at all.
The Doctor: One of those ones where, except for the last option, I’d like to make everything worth positive points, but as something ought to be worth less, Christopher Eccleston loses out. I’ve never met an Eccleston fanboy or girl, anyway. (If you haven’t heard of Doctor Who, this may not be the blog for you.)
Manikins: I saw this on The Daily WTF. Apparently it’s a real thing.
Nyan Cat: The regular version, the 10-hour version, and the 100-hour version.
The Who: Another one that hopefully requires no explanation.
What are the odds: A classic brain teaser. I didn’t assign point values because I’m not sure which answer is correct (although giving +1 to the first option and -1 to the third did cross my mind).
Ponies: By far the most divisive question on the quiz. Again, I’d like to give them all positive points. Rest assured that I respect all pony preferences.
Zeta: The pick-up artist community is not a hotbed of intellect, thus some of them don’t actually know the Greek alphabet that well. I’m only aware of one person, however, who thinks that Russian uses the Spanish alphabet.
Betta: A Siamese fighting fish.
Alpha: From Dollhouse, naturally.
Facial Alpha: Here we get into the silly PUA categories created when presented with evidence that people don’t exist in a hierarchy of best to worst. How do you account for attractive people with repellent personalities? They’re facial alphas, of course.
Alpha alpha: The short guy with the eye problem is another interesting character who rather resents anyone with dating success.
Alpha alpha alpha prime: The silliest category I’ve heard of so far.
