So, we're all up to speed on the whole societal structures and hierarchical architecture of western culture and are thus aware that the "alpha/beta/omega/sigma" designations for human dominance, modeled after a misunderstanding of how wolf packs proliferated, is ultimately and almost entirely wrong, yea? Well, even if you've been sniffing glue and panties on the short bus, let me just inform you that anyone who uses the "alpha male etc" dialogue train on you is a category five dipshit and deserves a train run on them for all eternity. Thus, let me tell you about how this alpha/beta/gamma/delta/epsilon shit goes on in the human species, bro.

So, culture is our operating system. We define our identity and role in society by the narrative society feeds us. With this in mind, let us assume the system created is intentional, and the reason we assume this is because it allows us to gain better insight into what the intended outcome/output of the created system is. Simply, the system is designed to reward ideal game-players, where "winning the game" coincides with "being successful." Also, you just lost, but that's not important, as what this simple framing of reality does is it simplifies the following definitions.

An "alpha" is someone that adheres to the presented narrative and plays a dominant strategy. They get a mate(s), they get money, they procreate with high yield potential (not necessarily many offspring but their offspring are taught the dominant strategy) and yadda yadda.

A "beta" is someone that adheren to the presented narrative and plays a symbiotic strategy to the dominate strategy. They get a mate, they get enough to live comfortably, and they procreate.

An "omega" is someone that adheres to the presented narrative and fails at normative social games. This may spurn experimentation to find niches not readily defined already or they will find themselves phased out.

A "sigma" is someone that does not adhere to the presented narrative and plays an entirely different game.

A "retard" is whatever tf I am.

But, y'know, I actually wrote all this to give a simple analogy. If each of these categories were to pursue a philosophical question, they would ask these questions:

Alpha: What is a man?

Beta: What is a woman?

Omega: What?

Sigma: Why does my semen taste like barbecue sauce?

Retard: I'm a cop. Wait...shit!

But you see how this works? We grow up in a culture that tells us what the world is and our place in it. We enter adulthood with a whole load of delusions, and some people get good living in a fantasy world, others make do, while there are those who have bounced off the walls of the holodeck enough times to know the shit on the telly and on our phones ain't real. And the funny thing about that is, the narrative that has been woven for the masses has added antibodies to get the average person to automatically throw out any and all words from any "conspiracy theorist."

Which, I can tell you being literally Qanon, who is me, this one, singular individual and definitely, absolutely not a community of counterintelligence bimbos working together for narrative construction purposes, that it is really frustrating that I can define the ineffable and have many times now on Lemmy and there are some omegas who will read this and see me use the word "retard" and not have an absolute vitriolic response to the concept of Qanon and they will not hear what I have said.

This works in both directions, for both diametrically opposed cults of political identity. It's like society is engineered or some shit.