It’s all part of the growing sigma male movement
On Dec. 11, 2024 Variety magazine confirmed that a long-rumored film remake of the 2000 cult thriller “American Psycho” was finally in the works. (Actually, it’s slated to be a readaptation of the book that inspired the film).
“American Psycho” spawned the fictional character Patrick Bateman, the well-dressed, well-heeled serial killer the memosphere adopted in 2021 as the epitome of a “sigma male.” This new masculine ideal had been infiltrating social media for years. But in late 2024, I knew the trend had catapulted to another level after the ultimate sigma male, Donald J. Trump, was elected president of the United States.
In the December 2024 Socionomist cover story “The ‘Sad, Stupid Rise of the Sigma Male’ Makes Perfect Socionomic Sense” I and colleague Robert Folsom explored what the sigma male is, and how its popularity in film and mainstream culture has waxed and waned alongside social mood for decades.
The sigma male…is the tradwife’s colorful male bird counterpart; i.e. masculinity on steroids, chased by a 20 oz. Red Bull. From what I’ve gleaned in my research, the sigma male is the classic alpha male minus friends or colleagues — or even a wolf pack. He is a lone wolf extraordinaire.
Donald Trump is many things: A lone wolf rarely seen in public with his wife Melania. A self-proclaimed antiestablishment rule-flouter. A high stakes deal maker and breaker. And a “my way or no way” man’s man. The sum of which — with my apologies to Gilbert and Sullivan — is the very model of a modern major sigma male.
We see the tradwife and sigma male revolution as a by-product of the nostalgia that attends waves of positive social mood. The Elliott Wave Theorist has said that “nostalgia is a bull market phenomenon that does its best to relive the glory days of the past.” Many people today believe the 1950s represent the glory years of economic prosperity and stable nuclear families. This sentiment goes hand in hand with another relevant bull market phenomenon: As positive social mood expands, gender roles become more traditional. Again, The Elliott Wave Theorist put it succinctly: “Men are more masculine and females, more feminine.”
That said, the archetype is not new. It appears throughout history, when positive social mood reaches such an extreme that gender idols (or modern-day influencers) in turn embody stereotypically extreme masculine and feminine traits. Let’s look back to see how social mood and the highs and lows of masculinity have played out together.
Now, a Feb. 5, 2025 Vox article titled “He Was Created to Be a Bloody Monster. Now He’s an Internet Hero” enters familiar socionomic territory in its interpretation of the rise of the sigma male, and its psychotic prototype:
Hierarchy, tradition, aggression — male-coded values people thought had been left in the dustbin of history. All have come roaring back.”
Bateman is back, then, because Trump is back, because the 1980s are back and boom boom, because the culture that birthed them both is back: all that wealth, all that greed, all that empty rage.
The December 2024 Socionomist draws the line back even further, to the 1950s.
Read the full, six-page cover story “The ‘Sad, Stupid Rise of the Sigma Male’ Makes Perfect Socionomic Sense” from the December 2024 Socionomist today as a special report for just $15!