What Happens When We Lose Our Filters?

The news about my mother gets more disturbing all the time. At Thanksgiving dinner, I was told, she referred to her daughter-in-law with a vile epithet … even though she was in that daughter-in-law’s home, and the insulted person had just cooked dinner for 11 members of our family.

I’m sorry to be vague about what was said; it would be a much more interesting and powerful story if I just repeated the insult, especially if I described the context. But because I have filters, I won’t. My family would never forgive me, and I wouldn’t expect them to.

The open question is whether my mother was always thinking such nasty thoughts about the people around her, and we only know it now because dementia has removed her filters.

If that’s the case, all I can say is, thank goodness for filters.

So here’s a question: How many times a day do your filters stop you from saying what’s really on your mind? As a person with ADHD, I can tell you that I cherish my filters, and I’m never embarrassed to admit I need Concerta and caffeine to keep them up and running. I have plenty of regrets about the times I wrote or said what was really on my mind, and can’t think of a situation where I held back and regretted it later.

We have a media culture today that thrives on the appearance of people speaking without filters. Some of them are really, really good at it. But I don’t believe for a second that the people who have the most to gain from saying outrageous things — whether we’re talking about Rush Limbaugh, Keith Olbermann, or even Glenn Beck — are truly speaking to us without filters.

I think they’re remarkably adept at creating facsimiles of partisan outrage, but if you could peek behind the curtain I think you’d see a savvy and extremely successful business model at work, rather than true anger born of genuine philosophical convictions. If any of these guys spoke into an open mic without filters, I think we’d hear more Lonesome Rhodes and less Tom Paine.

That said, I think this blog post by Chris Faust, the recently laid-off travel editor of USA Today, comes as close as we’re going to get to a genuinely unfiltered commentary by a media insider. Consider this lament:

But what bothers me the most is what my firing represented. See, I’ve been learning all the tricks that a modern multi-platform journalist is supposed to know. In the past 22 months, I’ve blogged, tweeted, shot photos and videos, and handled speaking engagements. I edited my section, managed my high-personality staff and then in my spare time, I wrote cover stories – something that very few other editors at USA TODAY do. I hustled and I cajoled and I ended up out on my ass anyway.

Do you doubt, for even a second, that this is what she really thinks about what happened to her?

Compare it to this paragraph in the same post:

But increasingly, things have become more interesting outside the newsroom bubble. I’d go to conferences and meet people who were making it just fine on their own. Some were creating niche businesses, busting up the paradigm. Others were parlaying old school media talents into fresh ventures, with a moxie that made me wish I had the freedom to emulate them. The air inside USAT’s towers on Jones Branch Drive always seemed a little stale after that.      

These freelancers-slash-entrerpreneurs are smart. They are nimble. And now they are my role models, as I join their ranks. 

Now I get the sense I’m being sold a product. I don’t mean that as criticism — I’ve been in the exact same situation as Chris, and I understand how it feels to find yourself adrift after years of safe passage aboard one of the biggest ships on the sea. You have to create a new brand and sell your products as if your life depends on it … which of course it does.

That’s why you need the filters. 

Tags: Tags: adhd, dementia, family, filters, Media, trends