Today I’m launching a weekly Friday feature profiling an awesome beta male. Regular readers know I’m a big fan of the beta, believing that he makes an excellent mate and parenting partner. If only beta males felt secure in that knowledge! That’s hard to do when beta males are regularly portrayed as being subservient to women, awkward, needy, nerdy, geeky, etc. Though they comprise 80% of the male populace, no male wants to be a beta. Being a member of that dubious tribe is generally treated as a lifelong sentence of rejection and celibacy.

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Pish Posh.

It is true that a man without social dominance will not attract women. Self-confidence is the most commonly used metric to judge a man’s social dominance at first meeting. Contrary to popular media portrayals, beta males may be very self-possessed and sure of themselves. This generally reflects an awareness of their considerable abilities. However, they are not the guys waking up on the basement floor of the frat house covered with Sharpie. For some reason that must have made sense 10,000 years ago, women like those drunken fools.

Stop the insanity!

In The Evolution of Desire, David Buss writes:

Evolution has favored women who prefer men who possess attributes that confer benefits, and who dislike men who possess attributes that impose costs.

What are the benefits that women seek in a mate? According to the research of Buss and other evolutionary psychologists:

1. ECONOMIC CAPACITY

•   Females prefer males who offer resources.
•   Resources have to be accruable, defensible and controllable by men.
•   Men differ from each other in their holdings and willingness to invest them in a woman.
•   Advantages of being with one man outweighed advantages of being with several men.

2. SOCIAL STATUS

•   Good predictor of future resources.

3. AGE

•   Youth is preferred.

4. AMBITION AND INDUSTRIOUSNESS

•   Good predictor of future resources.
•   Signals willingness to provide and care for offspring.

5. DEPENDABILITY AND STABILITY

•   Undependable people provide erratically and inflict heavy costs on their mates.

6. INTELLIGENCE

•   Directly predictive of achievement, resources.

7. COMPATIBILITY

•   Relationship skills predict good fathering.

8. SIZE AND STRENGTH

•   Women prefer men who display physical and athletic prowess.

9. GOOD HEALTH

•   Provides better odds for healthy offspring.

10. LOVE AND COMMITMENT

•   Requiring love, sincerity and kindness assures the woman that the man will give something of equal value to her resource: sex and childbearing.

THE BOTTOM LINE:

Alpha males can be generally relied upon to provide:

•   Social status
•   Size and strength
•   Good health

Beta males can be generally relied upon to provide:

•   Intelligence
•   Dependability and stability
•   Compatibility
•   Good health
•   Love and commitment

I would argue that in the U.S. economy, which is nearly exclusively an information service economy, beta males are better positioned for:

•   Economic capacity
•   Ambition and industriousness

…and I think they’ll hold their own on:

•   Social status

...if they possess or develop the requisite social skills for interaction with females.

Greg Justice is an English major from Stanford who is spending his summer interning for Cisco Systems in their Communications department. He was hired to “harness social media to amplify Cisco’s awesomeness.” An article at Craigslist explains that “he was given the opportunity to drop beats on the company blog on a regular basis after his boss heard him rapping in his cubicle. Justice isn’t a stranger to music, either.”

I was the frontman for a 5-piece Stanford hip-hop/rock band that failed miserably. More importantly, I grew up listening to the Lion King soundtrack on repeat.

He named himself The World’s Most Interesting Intern and made a rap video, presumably with a Cisco Flip camcorder. In it, he’s got a geeky charm and a very winning attitude. It’s gone totally viral, with 59,000 viewers to date.

He’s gangly and goofy in Episode 2: Vegas, and totally adorable in Episode 3: Health Presence.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuPA9Nrnz7U&NR=1

Episode 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-87j7xWJUdw

Episode 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TphCCh5iuTU

Word is he’s already getting asked out on dates. I’d say he’s 9.5 for 10 on the checklist, with half a point deducted for apparent lack of strength. Oh well, he won’t be hunting any woolly mammoths. He’s probably got strength enough to be a social media superstar in the next five years.

Know an awesome beta? Nominate him in the comments or shoot me an email!