As you’re probably aware, there are two reliable ways to avoid queueing at the airport. One is to travel business class or be a celebrity – but business class is pricey, and becoming a celebrity takes years of work, or luck. The other is to deliberately show up very late and get escorted to the front of the line. This requires only that you’re a self-centred jerk who thinks the rules don’t apply to you – and you’ll be rewarded, every time, by the discovery that indeed they don’t. The airport queueing system, in short, is an Asshole Filter, a splendid term I’m borrowing from the US blogger Siderea. If you feel as if everyone you encounter is insufferable – as I suspect some airport staff do – it might not be because humans in general are terrible. You may simply, and inadvertently, have an Asshole Filter set up.
The example Siderea gives concerns Fred, a hypothetical boss who politely asks clients to email his staff, instead of himself, with certain queries. Respectful, rule-following types will do as he requests. Who won’t? People who don’t care about transgressing boundaries. Being an affable chap, Fred will still respond to those who email directly, thereby vindicating their rule-breaking. Fred’s done nothing unreasonable, yet he has tilted the playing field: now, he’ll end up dealing disproportionately with rude people. The effect isn’t confined to the workplace, of course. If you’re seeking a new relationship, but don’t proactively ask people you like, your dating life will soon be dominated by obliviously persistent wazzocks.
It gets worse. An additional problem with Asshole Filters is that people who do follow the rules grow resentful. “Well, screw Fred,” Siderea imagines them thinking. “Here I am trying to be obliging, and I’m getting treated second class.” They conclude that rule-breaking is the only way to succeed. If you’ve ever had the sense that a customer service “helpline” wasn’t designed to help you, but to keep complainants at bay, you’ll sympathise with my friend Dan, whose battle to solve a broadband problem ended with him negotiating directly with the office of TalkTalk’s chief executive. It’s not what you’re supposed to do, but it’s what works. The problem got solved.
Increasingly, it feels as if the culture as a whole is a giant Asshole Filter, encouraging us to become obnoxious if we wish to succeed. Late last year, an app called Just Not Sorry made headlines with its promise to screen women’s emails for disempowering language such as “sorry” and “just” and “I’m no expert”. But as the Oxford University linguist Deborah Cameron pointed out, this assumes women overuse such terms, when you could just as easily claim that men underuse them. Maybe life would go better if we all apologised more for our claims on others’ attention. Advice on becoming “confident” or “assertive” is often the same: it assumes brashness is the ideal, and that it’s the non-brash who need help. This might be necessary survival advice in an individualistic world. But it may also be turning us, despite our best intentions, into assholes.
• oliver.burkeman@theguardian.com
