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Why gossip is just so irresistible

by | Jan 10, 2025

Cartoon of a red bird with a human face speaking to a black bird with a human face. The speech bubbles spell out the word “gossip.”

This is a comic featuring an essay about gossip, interspersed with drawings of birds telling each other a juicy gossip tale. The essay starts here: I tried to give up gossip a few years ago. Bird A: I don't want to start drama, but … Bird B: What! What! This proved challenging because, as a tattletale from a young age, I’ve always thought of gossip as a window into a social world otherwise opaque to me. We're probably all familiar with its downsides. Bird A: There's this thing ... Bird B: Tell me! Spill! Gossip often becomes distorted in the retelling to maximize the adrenal pleasure of outrage and shock. It's subject to projection, speculation, and even conspiracy theories. It can be a privacy violation. It can be objectifying. Your evaluation of others might be influenced by knowledge you don't rightfully deserve.Bird A: WELL … Bird B: Yesss? Still, there's a feeling I get when somebody says, "Okay, did you hear …" that's as tangible as a lick of sorbet. Bird A, whispering: Okay, did you hear Robin wrote a novel? I got a copy of it and … she totally wrote Maggie into her book. Like, as a villain. Bird B: Wait, really? What is that irresistible flavor? Bird A: The details all line up! It's eerie. B: Like what? Let's first define the act of gossip as the dissemination (and perhaps discussion) of private information about a third party. There's the scientific explanation: We evolved to be interested in other people. Those motivated to find out who's behaving prosocially or not were, historically, more successful. Bird A: You know how Maggie collects antique silver jewelry and resells it online? Bird B: Yeah … Bird A: So in the book, this character is kind of a klepto. It starts off small, but then it escalates. Gossip in particular is socially nutritious, great bang for your buck — you're not just learning about the subject, but also about your interlocutor. The act of gossiping binds a group together, for better or worse, by articulating its shared values, reinforcing the mores of the collective. Bird A: It starts off small, but then it escalates. Bird B: Oh no, how? Bird A: She steals something really meaningful: a piece of antique silver jewelry that belongs to her friend. This can be an oppressive force, depending on what norms are being propped up. And your impressions of others are mediated by the group's impressions. It’s difficult to interact with them unburdened by that knowledge. Bird B: Waaait a second … Bird A: Yeah, the Maggie character steals it, and then her friend finds it listed online. Bird B: Well, that’s specific. But gossip is also a powerful site of connection. Passing along good gossip is like bringing dessert to a party or triumphantly carrying a fresh kill to your pride. Gossip is inert without being heard or shared — the magic happens primarily in the transmission. Bird A: Do you remember last year when Robin was freaking out because her grandmother’s earrings disappeared after a party she threw? Bird B: And Robin was saying Maggie took them? Bird A: I don’t know, but she asked me whether anything had ever gone missing after Maggie was around. And now she’s implying it in the book!If you've shared gossip with others, it sometimes becomes a collaborative puzzle to solve. What would I do in their situation? What should they do now? Bird B: Wait. I happen to know that Robin found the earrings under her couch a few months later. The ones with the filigree, right? She must have been too embarrassed to tell anybody. But I was there when she found them! Bird A: So she's making all this klepto stuff up? What is her deal?! Bird B: I think she's just always been super jealous of Maggie. The discussion might even grow into a full psychological workup of the subject: why people involved made the choices they did, what personal histories caused them to react this way, what kind of issues they have, and so on. Bird A: What makes it even weirder is that the Maggie character in the book is pathetically in love with the friend she steals from. Bird B: As if Maggie would be into Robin! Wishful thinking. Particularly salacious gossip or colorful characters might activate feelings of shock, vicarious delight, or righteous judgment. Bird B: It's kind of an open secret that Robin is completely obsessed with Maggie. But to put it in a book? Bird A: Ahh! You might even sense that the pleasure of schadenfreude is your reward for living virtuously — Bird A: It's so awkward!! Bird B: I know!!— and in the process, validating your own decisions by seeing the outcome of the alternatives. Bird A, looking in the mirror: Wow, messy. I'm glad I didn't hook up with Robin that time we stayed late at the bar. With gossip, you get a chance to peek at the consequences of someone else's choices without danger to yourself. Bird A: Imagine if I was in that book! Yikes. This is because the gossiper maintains much of their privacy while the subject does not. We see this play out as gossip's game of telephone moves from person to person. Bird A: Okay, did you hear that Robin totally made up this story where Maggie's stealing her earrings … and wrote a whole book about it! Isn't that outrageous? In the act of sharing gossip, you might even find yourself moving into a quieter voice, a more private register of speech: more intimate than small talk and catch-up, but less vulnerable than confession. Bird C: Well … don’t tell anyone this, but, Maggie might actually be a klepto. Bird A: What!? When you gossip about personal subjects, you're also seeing a more intimate version of the person you're talking to. Aside from the potential for bonding this provides, it creates a temporary bubble within which to speak and hear unpalatable revelations.Bird C: I swear she swiped a necklace from this cute shop in our neighborhood. I think the owner confronted her. Bird A: Whoa. So Robin's not making it up? Bird C: And there's that thing where Maggie “forgets” to return stuff she borrowed. Even though gossip is prone to becoming untethered from reality, it also provides a rare opportunity to find out possible truths — about what people do, about how people feel. Bird C: On top of that, she totally hooked up with Robin at the Christmas party a couple years ago. The “possible” in possible truths is important. Gossip creates a long shadow that follows its subject, constructed from unverified pieces of lore. Bird C: Maggie doesn't want it to get around. Only by turning away from these secondhand narratives are we able to truly relate to a person, with all their subtlety and nuance. Bird C: She's embarrassed about that whole period of her life. Bird A: Wow, I had no idea about any of this. But this exists in tension with the desire to transmit and receive information about each other — stuff that’s bizarre, seedy, and strange, too pungent for public consumption.Bird C: I think Robin's in the wrong, but also not totally making things up. Gossip is at once a bonding agent, a stage for fantasy and storytelling, a crowdsourced oral history, a book of little secrets. Bird A: Do I really know anybody? Should I even know any of this? And isn’t it delicious? Bird C: This reminds me … Bird A: Go on … Bird C: Okay, did you hear Robin has a tendency to —

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