A lack of filter means saying whatever is on your mind without considering politeness, appropriateness, relevance, or respect for the situation. People who have no filter may use profanity when they should not or bring up sensitive topics such as religion, politics, sex, body parts, or body odors in ways that offend others. Human communication follows social norms, and these norms discourage creating unnecessary controversy, embarrassing people, or discussing highly divisive topics in casual conversation. When someone ignores these norms, they may be seen as awkward, weird, or socially unaware, and others may feel unsafe or uncomfortable interacting with them. Appropriateness is a skill that can be learned by thinking before speaking, considering the audience and situation, and asking whether something is respectful, relevant, and suitable to say.
TL;DR;
IMO, communicative tailoring is better than full masking, it required a lot of practice (for me) but was entirely worth it.
Disclaimer, all of this is incredibly subjective and YMMV.
My thoughts used to be “They have absolutely no clue how much filtering is happening” followed by a serious consideration on whether or not i’m putting in as much effort as i care to, to communicate with this person.
I’ll up the translation if i feel the juice is worth the squeeze, but nowadays it’s rarely an issue.
I’d like to be clear that i consider “masking” and “translation” to be distinct practices.
In this context, masking is an effort to tailor your communication to others with no real regard (or understanding) of the cost to benefit ratio or the long term impact of such a practice on your mental health, it’s a full time acting gig to pretend to be something other than your full self.
What i call translation(or tailoring) is more like taking your existing personality and tailoring it to emphasise aspects that you feel would work better for communication with said person. There’s little loss of personality fidelity and it feels a lot less like acting.
I understand it can sound the same, but it’s an important distinction for me personally , because the latter is significantly less effort and still maintains my personality , which allows me to filter out who i do and don’t want to communicate with.
For me it did take a significantly longer time to build up the social skill to be able to understand enough about people to tailor to them (for me, straight masking requires less upfront skill), but the result was worth it to me.
As a bonus, that additional required social skill makes all other related tasks easier as well.
Not to say that full masking isn’t a useful tool sometimes, but it’s like any other tools, in that it should be used in appropriate situations with an eye to the potential outcomes of doing so and will require practice and judgement to get the outcomes you want.
You could full mask through mandatory bullshit business meetings that serve no purpose other than to make someone underqualified for their job feel like they are important, for instance.
The real secret bonus to this tailoring is that I’ve found a broader range of people who fit the criteria of “my people” and also a generally expanded social experience, even with people i don’t actually like very much.