Abstract

Due to social media’s inexorable authority over how we construct our sense of self or identity, the dimensions of augmented reality are always in flux. While many digitised narratives have contributed to forming numerous communities that would otherwise have had difficulty establishing an identity, some have ingratiated themselves into the male psyche over time, where they have developed their pernicious presence. One such narrative is the "Sigma Male" discourse. It goes beyond the nuances of the typical Alpha-to-Gamma range of hierarchy and is considered to locate itself outside the standard masculine socio- sexual paradigms. Due to the frequently flawed representation of this narrative on social media platforms since 2021, it conservative. This article aims is capable of catalysing anything that is fundamentally to study how different male archetypes, particularly the "Sigma archetype" rhetoric, increase the risk of in-group bias and out-group prejudice by encouraging the stigmatisation of already-existing nonconforming values and, as a consequence, normalise cyberbullying among men who do not confide in the mainstream masculine prototypes depicted by the visually or linguistically problematic memes and Tiktok videos, YouTube shorts, and Instagram Reels. Furthermore, this paper also investigates how this narrative takes a paradoxical form where one can uncover the cultural allusions hidden within these texts by deciphering the contents, captions, hashtags, and associated comments and delve into the fact that these apparent (or not so apparent) discursive approaches might either reinforce or undermine the dominant cultural norms, beliefs, or power systems.