I know a girl who knew a girl who was ex-communicated from her oldest group of friends for being a gossip. The moniker was thrust upon her like a scarlet letter and, before she knew it, after a few whispered conversations at the expense of others, her own friends had disowned her. Being a gossip, it turned out, got you dumped. Yet, in recent years, gossip has actually seen its cultural cache somewhat rehabilitated.
Culturally, our appetite for gossip is at its apex. DeuxMoi, which is commonly referred to as the internet’s go-to gossip, first began as a lifestyle site in 2013, and lay dormant for seven years before it snowballed into what it is today during the pandemic. At the start of 2020, the account had close to 40,000 followers; today it boasts 2 million followers and counts Bella Hadid, Cardi B and Chrissy Teigen among them. It follows the format of ‘blind’ tidbits of gossip, which are then re-packaged neatly to its social media accounts. DeuxMoi’s gossiping reach has expanded to a weekly podcast, newsletter, novel, merchandise, and even an HBO drama, which is currently in pre-production.
DeuxMoi’s reputation as the internet’s best — and biggest — gossip was cemented by Kim Kardashian, who endorsed it as "the bible" on a recent episode of The Kardashians. The cultural arbiter has circulated rumours of break-ups, make-ups and bust-ups within the celebrity sphere, many of which have eventually been confirmed by either the star themself or their team. Deux knows how to gossip – and it knows how to do it well.
Of course, DeuxMoi isn’t the only stakeholder in the re-branding of gossip. There’s also the newsletter Popbitch, which covers political and pop-cultural gossip; Diet Prada, famed for calling out misconduct in the fashion industry; and a blog called Tattle, which focuses on social media influencers. There is also the rise of “gossip surveillance”, which has exploded on TikTok. It refers to users eavesdropping on strangers’ conversations in public places and reporting the “tea” to their TikTok audiences, sometimes offering identifying features of all those involved. The #Surveillance – which is where these videos exist on the app – has been viewed just shy of 600 million times. 2023 has been the year we gossiped, gossiped, and gossiped some more.
Social bonding
While it might have a reputation as an unsavoury means of communication, gossip does actually serve a purpose as a powerful form of social bonding. “Gossip is actually a part of human nature,” Frank McAndrew, professor of psychology at Knox College, tells Women’s Health. McAndrew is a world-renowned expert on gossip and his research has found that there is a positive element to gossip that is often ignored. “In the world that we lived in pre-historically, we lived in small groups of about 150 people, and we would spend our lives in that group. You had to know who you could trust and who you couldn’t, so you were constantly monitoring people's reputations. And if you weren't interested in that stuff, you just didn't do very well, you got taken advantage of by people.”
McAndrew is clear that our very human instinct to gossip is just that: human, something that’s innate. “We are the descendants of people who were obsessed with other people, so the origins of gossip are the same as the origins for everything else we find irresistible,” he adds. “This is a matter of social survival.”
Whisper it
Is it merely coincidence though that in line with the explosion of gossip as social currency, we have become lonelier as people too? Nearly one in four people worldwide, which translates into more than a billion people, feel “very or fairly lonely”, according to a recent survey of more than 140 countries. Yet a recent study from Binghamton University, State University of New York even suggested that 'bad' gossip in the workplace is less risky than you might think. Researchers had expected people who participated in negative gossip to be trying to appear powerful or controlling, but all they found was that people dismissed their information as complaining.
Gossiping in a negative way can lead to social exertion, says anthropologist Robin Dunbar, the author of Grooming, Gossip and the Evolution of Language. But while that may sound icky, it's designed to help communities: McAndrews believes that it's a way for communities to act as policemen for their own peoples' behaviour. “The ‘negative’ element of gossiping still serves a purpose; communities struggle to keep people in-line and not doing things that go against the wider interests of the group, so gossiping negatively can be productive because, without the gossip that can hold somebody to account, something can become destructive,” he says.
It’s precisely the idea of using gossip as a means of surveillance that plays into our fascination with talking about celebrities. Celebrity gossip is something that “modern media has tricked our prehistoric brains into caring about,” according to McAndrew. “Knowing more about these people [in the public eye] than we know about other people convinces our brains that they’re socially important to us,” he says. “They serve a good sort of ‘social function’ in the modern world; think of them as friends-in-law. Regardless of who you’re talking to, gossiping about a famous person you both know is something of a starting point for a real relationship in real life.”
If you're surprised by the lack of negative impact that gossip has, then remember that gossip is defined as 'casual' conversation about other people. When gossip tips into bullying - an intentional behaviour to hurt someone - or abuse, the risks are higher.
How to gossip well
Gossiping well can stop that line being crossed. “The fact that the word gossip is perceived as having this negative connotation doesn't mean that that's the only way it's actually used,” Dunbar says.
McAndrew is clear with his rules for gossiping well. “You want your gossip to be perceived as not being self-serving,” he says. “If we felt like somebody wasn’t pulling their weight in the office, that would be perceived as exploring the information that might help the group function better. That’s gossiping ‘well.’ Trying to ruin the reputation of somebody – by discussing their character, or any other defining factors – is when gossiping turns ugly.”
In short, people surveilling each other on TikTok, or sharing falsified ‘blind items’ with internet sleuths about celebrities they only know parasocially, is nothing short of unconstructive gossip – the sort that can exacerbate feelings of loneliness. The key, it seems, is to gossip ‘properly.’
As for the puritanicals who dumped my friend-of-a-friend for being a “gossip”, McAndrew has some choice words for them. “There are no people in this world who do not gossip,” he says. “Some just gossip better than others. I tend to think of gossip as a social skill. If you were a good gossiper, you're usually a pretty popular person, you have a reputation for knowing what's going on. And if you’re a bad gossiper, it can be quite the opposite. But there’s no such thing as somebody who doesn’t gossip – only those who gossip well and those who don’t.”
"gossip" - Google News
January 07, 2024 at 07:05AM
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"gossip" - Google News
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