alpha
Explanation
The Joke
In the first panel, a red-haired man tells another man at what appears to be a bar: "The thing with women is you gotta convince them that you're strong. That you're an alpha." In the second panel, labeled "Later...", the same red-haired man is on a date with a woman. Skulls have fallen out of his coat onto the table, and he says: "Whoops! Another skull fell out of my coat. I've slain so many foes, it's getting silly!"
The comic takes the "alpha male" dating advice concept to its absurdly literal conclusion. When pickup artists and self-help gurus tell men to act "alpha" and demonstrate strength and dominance, they mean things like confidence and assertiveness. But the comic imagines someone interpreting "alpha" in the most primitive, literal sense -- proving dominance by actually killing rivals and carrying their skulls around as trophies.
The Humor
The humor lies in the gap between what "alpha" behavior is supposed to look like in modern dating advice (being confident, taking charge) and what actual alpha dominance looks like in nature -- physically defeating rivals. The red-haired man has taken the advice so literally that he has resorted to carrying around the skulls of his vanquished enemies to impress his date. His casual tone ("Whoops! It's getting silly!") makes it even funnier, as if having skulls falling out of your jacket is just a charming quirk rather than evidence of serial homicide. The comic effectively mocks the entire "alpha male" ideology by showing what it would actually look like if taken to its logical extreme.
The votey panel shows the man smugly saying "My sperm have a very low mutation rate," which extends the joke by having him try to impress with another literal biological fitness metric that no human would ever use in a dating context, further satirizing the pseudoscientific language of the alpha male movement.
References
- Alpha male theory: The concept of "alpha" males originates from studies of wolf pack hierarchy by L. David Mech in the 1970s. Mech himself later disavowed the concept, noting that wild wolf packs are actually family units, not dominance hierarchies. Despite this, the term has been widely adopted in pickup artist and self-help communities to describe dominant, assertive male behavior.
- Pickup artist (PUA) culture: The comic satirizes the advice culture that emerged from books like "The Game" by Neil Strauss (2005), which encouraged men to adopt various strategies to demonstrate social dominance and attract women.