We filter by gatekeepers: Authorities, parents, priests, and teachers shield the bad and selectively pass on “the good stuff.” We filter by intermediates: Sky high is the reject pile in the offices of book publishers, music labels, and movie studios. They say no much more often than yes, performing a filtering function for what gets wide distribution. Every headline in a newspaper is a filter that says yes to this information and ignores the rest. We filter by curators: Retail stores don’t carry everything, museums don’t show everything, public libraries don’t buy every book. All these
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