Earlier this week, The Hollywood Reporter published a new issue with the cast of the HBO comedy Silicon Valley on the cover, featuring the headline “The Triumph of the Beta Male.” In the article, the actors discuss the departure of one of the show’s stars in the wake of sexual assault allegations, the changing face of Silicon Valley, and how the group’s chemistry drives the show.

“There’s a tender quality to these guys,” star Zach Woods said. “I’m among my tribe of, like, beta males.”

To most, this may seem like a lighthearted feature about a show which focuses on a group of nerdy aspiring entrepreneurs. But for some in the right wing media, the cover was an outrage, showing nothing less than the complete demise of the chest-beating, alpha American male we all know and love.

The MAGA crowd is extremely mad about the Hollywood Reporter's "Silicon Valley" cover pic.twitter.com/7PKC9wkkIQ — Will Sommer (@willsommer) March 8, 2018

“Where is culture going at this point?” conservative comedian and self-described alpha male Chad Prather breathlessly asked Fox and Friends on Friday morning. “I mean the worst thing you can be today in America is a white, heterosexual, Christian male. I mean, there’s an all-out war on people… I don’t understand why there’s such a battle just to be masculine.”


Prather went on to add that he felt sorry the male youth of today feeling nervous about burping and scratching themselves without inhibition.

But Prather wasn’t the only one standing up for America’s put-upon alphas. “The cast of HBO’s ‘Silicon Valley’ stand in a line, hands in one another’s pockets with a meek expression that says: ‘You don’t have to worry about me getting you pregnant, because my sperm count is so low!” fumed Bre Payton at the Federalist. “‘Not that you would sleep with me anyway, because my handshake is so weak it would send you running in the other direction.'”

Infowars’ Alex Jones was also furious at the magazine cover. Fresh from undertaking alpha activities like smearing a bunch of teenagers who just survived a horrifying mass shooting as “crisis actors,” Jones accused “globalists” like Jeff Bezos of trying to brainwash America’s wide-eyed young men into believing that being a beta male is OK.

“They project this issue of the beta male out onto the population like it’s cool and trendy so people accept the fact that they’ve been emasculated… eating massive amounts of estrogen mimickers, not just the soy milk but the BPA and the rest of it,” Jones soberly explained. “They’re basically making it cool, this synthetic transformation that has been engineered over the males.”


If you’re concerned about how soy might be transforming you or a man you care about into a beta, never fear. Infowars sells a bunch of supplements like “Alpha Power,” “Strawberry Caveman True Paleo Formula,” and ProstaGuard to safeguard your alpha virility. Buzzfeed News has previously found that the supplements do remarkably little and are basically just overpriced vitamins, but Buzzfeed News is also full of beta males, so what would you expect.

Twitter users were also incredibly helpful in explaining just why it was so bad to be a beta. “If you are a beta male, it is a 100% certainty your women will leave you or cheat on you with an Alpha male if given the opportunity,” #Benghazi Stacy tweeted. “Signed, #Caring.”

There’s plenty of evidence to suggest that America’s model for masculinity is in fact deeply broken, leaving boys and young men afraid of expressing any sort of vulnerability. Toxic masculinity has also been directly linked to a sense of grievance and entitlement that drives many mass shooters. But right-wing media would have you believe the real danger is that men just aren’t masculine enough anymore.