candid field notes from my ongoing investigation into my favorite animal; people.

I've never been interested in the loudest person in the room. The people who fascinate me are usually the opposite. It was the quiet ones. The observant ones. The ones who can change the entire direction of a room without ever needing to dominate it.

Years ago I put my name into the same Wu-Tang Clan name generator that gave Donald Glover "Childish Gambino." It spit out "Muted Alpha Behavior." I didn’t feel the need to click again. For some reason it felt true before fully understanding what it would mean to me. I was obsessed with the strange ways people affect each other, the stories people tell themselves and the patterns that repeat across relationships, leadership, creativity, faith, ambition, love, betrayal, art, and identity.

I always thought of muted it less as silence and more the way you'd describe a color. A saturated frequency that isn't screaming for attention.

A mountain doesn't become smaller because it isn't introducing itself. The strongest person in the room is rarely the person announcing it. I kept noticing the same thing everywhere. In relationships. In faith. In people who build things. In people who destroy them. The loud version is usually obvious. The quiet version is usually the one running the show. So, Muted Alpha Behavior became the place where I keep video field notes on all of it. This is where they live.

Some of those notes, or essays, others may result in a reaction video. Some become films. Some have even turned into upcoming books.

Most become conversations with myself that refuse to leave me alone.

It's an ongoing investigation into what makes people who they are.

Including me.

— Gabrielle Alexander