"What is your relationship with gossip?"
It's the question Normal Gossip host Kelsey McKinney asks her guests in each episode of her hit podcast.
The premise of Normal Gossip is exactly what it sounds like — gossip about "normal" people (i.e. non-celebs).
Kelsey invites new guests each week and tells them a story about a "friend of a friend" — a random, anonymous stranger. The stories range from craft circle scandal to neighbour betrayal to possible cults.
And as Kelsey and her guests ponder the nature of gossip and their relationship with it, it's hard not to consider what your own is — and whether, despite its bad reputation, gossip might actually be a good thing.
There's no doubt gossip is a guilty pleasure for many of us — but should we let go of the "guilty" part, and lean into the pleasure?
Gossip girls
LoadingGossip has long carried with it a whole bunch of cultural baggage. Most religions frown upon it — Kelsey herself says she grew up in an evangelical household where it was considered a sin.
"I grew up basically praying that God would take my intense and innate desire to gossip about everything and everyone away," she explains. "That obviously did not happen!"
But even if you aren't weighed down by religious guilt, gossip isn't exactly a celebrated activity. Whether it's in the schoolyard, workplace, or social circle, to be seen as a "gossip" is frequently to be branded as someone who is not to be trusted. The gendered connotations of that are no accident.
From its origins in the conversations women had in birthing rooms, gossip has always been coded as something women and other minorities do — and as such, dismissed as frivolous or even dangerous. But the reality is a lot more complicated than that.
Idol talk
If you're a millennial who came of age during the 2000s, you spent your formative years in the golden era of gossip — of the celebrity kind in particular. With the rise of the internet came gossip blogs like Perez Hilton and Oh No They Didn't!, and the act of sharing and analysing the lives of the rich and famous was no longer confined to magazines in hairdressers and doctor's offices — it took over the internet.
It was glorious, and it was also a mess, with very real and dark implications for the lives of those that got caught up in it.
No one highlights this more, perhaps, than Britney Spears — whose story not only exposes the bleakest aspects of celebrity culture, but also points to the reckoning we've had with it in recent years.
From ubiquitous jokes about her shaved head and public breakdown in 2007, through to the #FreeBritney movement and celebration of the end of her conservatorship in 2021, these cultural conversations about Britney showcase the power of gossip in both its most harmful and helpful forms.
Of course, celebrity gossip is still thriving — podcasts proliferate, and curated gossip accounts like DeuxMoi wrack up millions of followers. But it's not just celebrity gossip the internet has allowed to thrive — many of us lurk in spaces like Twitter and Reddit and Facebook groups purely to absorb the tea of random strangers. As the popularity of Normal Gossip proves, we're just really interested in the stories of others.
The greater good
While gossip has traditionally been seen as trashy and a bad habit, social psychologist Frank T. McAndrew says that most of the time, gossip is neutral and often even positive.
"Society could not operate without gossip," he says.
"It is the way we keep up with the goings-on of other people, and the way we keep track of their reputations.
"It is essential to know who you can trust and who is a cheater. It is a way of keeping people in line and forcing them to be good citizens … it is also an activity that creates bonds between people."
Kelsey points out that the very reason gossip has long been maligned is exactly why it's so important.
"Gossip is generally a tool of people who do not have actual power, which includes women and people of colour," she says.
"The messaging of gossip as 'frivolous' in particular, I think, is meant to brand legitimate information sharing as sketchy."
The research into gossip by Dartmouth postdoctoral fellow Eshin Jolly reveals similar outcomes.
"Our work suggests gossip that helps reduce social uncertainty can be beneficial, for example clarifying others' behaviour and the acceptability of that behaviour," he says. Whisper networks, much-discussed with the rise of the #MeToo movement, are just one example of the ways gossip can be used for the greater good.
But does something have to be a moral good for it to have value? When it comes down to it, gossip is also just really, really fun. Maybe our relationship with it doesn't have to be so complicated. It's vital to us, after all.
"Humans have been shaped through evolution to find things irresistible when they are essential to our survival and reproductive success," Dr McAndrew says.
"So gossip is very much like donuts and sex — we just can't help ourselves."
Jenna Guillaume is a freelance journalist and the author of Young Adult books What I Like About Me and You Were Made For Me.
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