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Traditionally, the term beta is used to refer to a male who tries to get in a woman’s good graces by doing as little work as necessary.  This usually entails doing things like throwing out compliments or being overly agreeable or helpful towards a woman, merely for the sake of trying to win said woman’s affections, rather than doing those very things simply to be sociable and friendly.  These beta types are often stereotyped as wearing fedora hats and uttering things such as “You first m’lady” and “You wanna come over and play D&D this Saturday?  Maybe afterwards we can watch Dragon Ball Z together if that’s cool with you”.

Facebook betas are people who “like” everything posted by someone whose good graces they’re trying to get in to, whether they actually find the post to be interesting or humorous in the least.  They engage in this constant “like” button mashing because they are hoping to endear themselves to the person in question without actually having to put in the work that would be necessary in a traditional pre-social-network relationship.  Validating somebody’s “posts” in real life would require more than flashing them a thumbs-up.  One would actually need to give some sort of reasoning as to why they though somebody’s shitty instagram picture of absolutely nothing was a great idea to share with everybody, which would no doubt require some degree of lying.

You’ll see this happen a lot when somebody in a social circle has some slight level of fame, success, or is a woman whom the beta male finds appealing.  If someone on facebook constantly posts trite, uninteresting content, yet continues to have a flurry of likes for every uninspired post they make, they clearly have amassed a small army of beta-types vying for their attention.  The individuals who receive all this validation for doing something as banal as taking an overly filtered picture of themselves (if not hundreds), or posting some half-baked, poorly written social commentary, are never ones to reciprocate with the excessive thumbs-upping themselves.  These aren’t relationships of equality, but alpha-beta relationships, borne of one parties constant need for attention and the others need for acceptance.

The problem with these facebook betas, is that their constant positive reinforcement of other people’s narcissistic, feeble posts, establishes an unwarranted sense of accomplishment in the recipient.  The attention-seeking poster is rewarded for constantly engaging in empty, egotistical ventures, and is never held to any kind of standard, insofar as improving their ability to tell a story, formulate an idea, or post a photo that isn’t inherently drenched in vanity.  It’s the social media equivalent of the rise of individuals like Paris Hilton, or Kim Kardashian, who obtained celebrity and fame, all without having any discernible talent.  Mrs Hilton and Kardashian are the alphas in this case, and all those commoners who hold them in high esteem for no good reason are the betas.

This constant beta-fluffing isn’t likely to result in the attention-recipient ever accomplishing anything, or achieving any real degree of success in life however.  The recipient of all these empty compliments develops a skewed sense of reality, wherein they are more interesting, talented, or attractive than they actually are.  These delusions of grandeur bypass the natural order of improvement, which occurs through a series of successes and failures.  If every single thing somebody produces, regardless of quality or significance is praised, that individual never develops a sense of what actually has quality or significance.  Essentially, they are turning in D+ work all their lives, yet constantly receiving “A“s for the minimal degree of effort that is actually invested.

A good example would be the “worst of” contestants on American Idol, or other glorified talent shows.  These contestants apply to these programs, then show up to sing in front of large groups of people, all the while legitimately believing themselves to be accomplished singers.  After they inevitably crash and fail in a cringe-inducing fashion, they always seem to be genuinely confused as to how the judges weren’t absolutely floored by their performances.  As it usually turns out, they had friends who constantly buttered them up with praise and adoration for their horrendous performance skills, so they started to develop delusions of possessing some sort of talent or skill, which they never actually had.  They were never told that they were terrible at singing, so they never felt the need to actually improve, or to find something they were actually good at.

Ultimately, it’s better to have legitimate criticism or praise for the content you put out into the world, rather than receive fake approval or a complete lack of feedback.  A complete lack of feedback is actually better than fake approval, since it tends to drive the ambitious person to continue honing their skills until they finally get the results they are looking for.  People seem to have issues being perfectly honest with others on social media however.  Nobody wants to tell that person who posts 12 pictures of themselves on a daily basis to maybe tone it down a little, because it comes across as desperate and needy, so the empty thumbs up continue to pour in, and the narcissism grows.  You can’t really blame the one inundating social media with self-centered postings however, as social media enables this behavior.  In the physical world, anyone who talks about themselves all the time, or constantly tries to turn the focus of a conversation onto themselves tends to be ignored or disliked, while on social media, this behavior is positively reinforced via some sort of point system.

The way to fix this, is quite obviously to have social media where thumbs-ups are replaced with thumbs-downs.  That way, these beta’s ability to positively reinforce terrible content and narcissistic behavior is greatly limited.  Either the shitty post gets no feedback, or the beta has to actually formulate some sort of thought-out response to leave as a comment.  If you “like” that stupid out-of-focus instagram picture of somebody’s terrible looking food, you’re going to need to actually explain why, since taking the easy way out via a thumb’s up is no longer an option.  Obviously, nobody will ever be truly honest and click a thumbs-down on shitty content though.  That would be far too honest.