Sigma males and Social Media

The rise of social media over the past two decades has created an online exhibition space, causing many people to think of their lives as a show to be displayed for others online. The constant pressure to maintain a certain online image and social media presence has driven a worrying number of people to lose sight of themselves, and prioritize their online image and social media exposure before considering their true wants or passions. One of the few groups in society who have managed to avoid this challenge of the modern world is the sigma males of the world. Sigma males have a unique way of thinking about and interacting with social media, from which we can all learn a lot. Let’s take a look at how a sigma male approaches his social media usage. Make sure to read until the end, as sigma males serve as a useful example for improving your relationship with social media.

The need to impress others

Sigma males are known for being the lone wolves of society, who operate outside of the boundaries of the traditional hierarchy of social dominance. As a rule of thumb, most social media platforms exist as a platform designed to help us share elements of our lives with other people. Given that the vast majority of people in society derive their personal sense of worth, at least in part, based on what others think of them, it hardly comes as a surprise that most social media platforms have developed into an arena in which we show off our lives in an attempt to impress others or project a certain image of ourselves to the world. Also unsurprisingly, this has led to a dramatic rise in mental health problems in the groups who use social media most frequently, to the point where health experts say that reducing time on social media to thirty minutes a day has a significant effect on improving the symptoms of anxiety, depression, and sleep problems. Despite the fact that it has these negative effects, people remain addicted to social media because of a wanting to impress others and FOMO, or the ‘fear of missing out.’

But the game that takes place in this arena is one that sigma males have little time for. Sigmas derive their sense of personal value and worth internally, and have no need for external validation. Wanting to impress others has no appeal to a sigma male, and rather he views time spent creating superficial content just to create an online image as wasted time that could be better spent elsewhere on more genuinely fulfilling pursuits. What’s more, sigma males are generally unaffected by the feeling of FOMO, as their primary concern is whether or not their time is spent developing themselves, and they give little thought to whatever it is other people are doing. Sigma males only use social media to the extent that they feel it fulfils them, and don’t get sucked in to an addiction based on the validation of others.

A tool of communication and learning

Sigma males are at their core, curious minds. They possess a highly analytical way of thinking, and love to look at life as a series of puzzles to be questioned and understood. When it comes to their use of social media, sigma males often harness these platforms as tools for learning and expanding their understanding of the world around them. The feed of a sigma male will often be filled with thought leaders sharing their life advice, updates on current affairs, and accounts dedicated to sharing interesting information about the world. Sigma males have less interest in keeping up to date with the day to day goings on of their peers, and generally try to avoid mundane daily updates on things like what people ate for lunch. By viewing social media as a tool for learning, sigma males find themselves empowered by this connection to the outside world, instead of viewing it as a source of intimidation.

Just as they see the benefits of social media, sigma males also understand that at its core, social media was invented for the purpose of communication. Unfortunately, the majority of this communication has come to revolve around projecting a successful image of oneself to the world, but at its heart, social media can still facilitate meaningful communication. As sigma males are not the most social of individuals, social media can provide an invaluable platform for them to keep in touch with their peers. While sigma males care deeply about the people close to them, they are not particularly fond of spending too much time around others. They mostly prefer to spend their free time by themselves, but when they do want to reach out to their friends, social media makes an excellent quick and easy way to get in touch without having to commit to long periods of social interaction.

Many sigma males also use the power of social media as a tool for archiving and sharing their own pursuits. Sigma males tend to form a broad range of, often unusual, hobbies, and social media can provide an invaluable platform for them to learn more about these hobbies and share their passion with others. Sigma males don’t share the fruits of their labour in order to win the respect of others, rather they do so as a way of reaching out and connecting with others from whom they might learn and grow their own skills.

Keeping a low profile

When it comes to the internet, some people would prefer to think of social media platforms as a megaphone that they can use to broadcast their thoughts and personal business to the world. The sigma male takes the exact opposite approach to the visibility of his online presence, keeping the majority of his profiles private. This reflects the introverted nature of how sigma males interact with others. As in real life, sigma males would rather stick to the sidelines and prefer not to draw too much unnecessary attention to themselves. They prefer to act as observers, even in the online world of social media, rather than be the centre of attention and draw too much focus towards themselves. Sometimes, this can leave sigma males with a rather understated social media presence, which only adds further to their natural aloofness and air of mystery.

Immune to the value system of social media

Social media are, at the end of the day, companies who need to generate a profit. While it might seem as if scrolling through our newsfeeds and uploading posts is something fun we do for free, there is a price to everything. When it comes to social media, the price we pay is our attention. These platforms are specifically designed to hook our attention and trap us in an addictive loop based on receiving validation and attention. By having the number of likes, followers, and views all on public show, social media platforms attempt to turn our online behaviour into a giant popularity contest. Luckily, this addictive mechanism has no effect on sigma males. Sigma males are immune to the addictive attention grabbing algorithms that cause most people to become so deeply attached to the performance of their online profiles.

Present themselves with honesty

One of the most dangerous elements of social media is that they have become a space in which we can project a complete fantasy version of ourselves to the world without having to really embody any of those projected traits in our day to day lives. It’s all too easy to post a sympathetic post about a charitable cause to seem like you care, but if those posts are accompanied by no real world action, they become purely symbolic, and only encourage further inaction. This can in many ways be worse than saying nothing at all, as people are able to fool themselves under the illusion that they’ve done something to help, when in fact they’ve done nothing at all. This symbolic “signalling” points to the fact that what we see projected online is usually far from actual reality. People don’t actually work on improving or changing their real lives, so long as their online image appears to be doing so.

Sigma males simply don’t see the point in this kind of signalling. Sigmas are totally dedicated to constant learning and growth throughout their lives, and find this performative type of self improvement to be nauseatingly fake and superficial. Sigma males are honest in their portrayal of themselves online, and know that there is far greater value in making real, actionable change in their day to day lives than simply appearing to have done so on social media. Sigma males maintain a natural policy of honesty in how they present themselves online, so what you see is what you get.

How to use social media more like a sigma male?

There are a few tips and tricks that can help to emulate the healthy relationship that  sigma males have with the world of social media. These include:

  • Practising gratefulness

A lot of performative behaviour online is spawned from a place of competition or envy. Practising gratitude for the things you have in life minimises the urge to show off or pretend to have more than you actually do. Learning to be happy with what you have is the best way to quieten the voice of jealousy that so often pops into our heads when we scroll through social media.

  • Take distance

When our phones are sitting right there in our pockets all day long, it can be hard to resist the urge to check social media every five minutes. But fighting this urge and learning to take distance from social media is one of the best ways to improve your personal relationship with the online world. Sigma males are generally unaffected by the more addictive sides of social media, meaning they are naturally without the urge to take their phones out and hit refresh all day long.

  • Routine clean-outs

Over time and without being taken care of, our social media feeds can end up like a sink full of dirty dishes or an overflowing laundry basket. Every now and again, it helps to go through the accounts you follow and those who follow you and remove anything that is taking up unnecessary space and attention. Sigma males like to be selective and carefully cultivate their social media feeds to cut down on the time spent scrolling through useless content.

Unlike most people, sigma males manage to maintain a surprisingly healthy relationship with social media, for the simple reason that they don’t get sucked into it. Emulating the sigma male attitude can greatly improve the impact social media has on your life.