Tittle-tattle, hearsay, GOSSIP.
A quick commentary on gossip: defining it and pushing back against its new cultural halo.
Proverbs 20:19 – “He who goes about as a slanderer reveals secrets, therefore do not associate with gossip.” Or Ephesians 4:29: “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths.” These and other biblical warnings about gossip were regularly quoted by my mother whenever I engaged in any behind-the-back conversation. Gossip, from primary school until now, has always felt indulgent to me. I knew it wasn’t noble, but I would sometimes do it anyway.
I’m a fan of Bella Freud’s interview series Fashion Neurosis and particularly enjoyed her conversation with the enigmatic Susie Cave. Susie, wife of Nick Cave, has many fascinating experiences to share, but what stood out to me was her spiritual commitment not to gossip anymore. Bella, who is also a close friend of Susie and Nick, explained how strangely confronting it was not being able to send Susie any ‘hot tea’ out of consideration for the person in question. Susie had made a kind of moral pact with herself, one that inevitably affected her relationships with those who continued the habits she had chosen to leave behind.
When I began reading about gossip, I was overwhelmed by the number of articles and studies extolling its benefits and, in some cases, actively encouraging it. To me, it felt like another example of the moral decay of modern life. Still, I wanted to understand the argument.
Terence Dores Cruz, a social science researcher at the Vrije Universiteit van Amsterdam, distinguishes between ‘competitive gossip’ and ‘cooperative gossip’. In the former, the gossiper seeks personal gain and aims to sabotage another person’s social standing. In the latter, gossip serves to promote cooperation. Cruz explains that good behaviour is rewarded with positive gossip, bad behaviour with negative. His research shows that people tend to support the ‘good’ kind of gossip more than the ‘bad’.
This distinction strikes me as both interesting and slightly misleading. When did we start throwing around the word ‘gossip’ so carelessly, as though every remark made in someone’s absence—even something like “My friend’s mother is in the hospital”—counts? Of course, the basic definition of gossip is simply talking about someone who is not present. But it lacks nuance. Merriam-Webster defines gossip as a person “who habitually reveals personal or sensational facts about others,” and gossip itself as a “rumour or report of an intimate nature”. What stands out here is the word ‘sensational’ and the phrase ‘of intimate nature’.
It didn’t take long for me to come across some rather fervent advocates for gossip. The most vocal might be journalist Kelsey McKinney. I read about her in both The New Yorker and Marie Claire. She hosts the podcast Normal Gossip and in her book writes:
“The goal of gossip about strangers is not to try people according to their secondhand deeds; it is to increase our own understanding of the world, to allow us to find enchantment and discovery in places we didn’t expect.”
I’m aware of how arrogant this will sound, but I laughed out loud when I read that. It struck me as nonsense. McKinney seems almost a little too enamoured with the subject. I’m about to get slightly more cutting, so if you can’t stand the heat, perhaps stop reading (don’t stop reading).
In the Marie Claire interview, McKinney references that well-known Joan Didion quote, “We tell ourselves stories to stay alive.” I cringed reading this. As a big fan of Didion’s work, I’ve seen this line misused and overused, to the point where it has lost its sharpness and grace. What baffled me further was how easily ‘storytelling’ and ‘gossip’ were conflated. Yes, gossip is technically talk about other humans. But to say that storytelling and gossip are essentially the same thing, is to strip these words of their linguistic precision.
Being human does involve speaking about other people. We do it constantly. But that doesn’t automatically make it gossip. Gossip always carries a trace of malice. It’s the thrill of recounting someone else’s downfall, awkwardness or embarrassment, whether you’re the one telling it or the one listening. Men do it. Women do it. And no matter how they dress it up in justifications, there is something indulgent about it. Deep down, most people know it’s wrong.
Some articles even tied gossip to the #MeToo movement, describing it as a “feminist imperative” or a tool “in the service of truth-telling”. I found this infuriating. Speaking out about rape and sexual assault is a deeply serious act of courage, and one that belongs solely to the victims. It is not gossip. The whispering among crew members or office colleagues is not what brings justice. It is the victim who speaks out who deserves recognition—not the people passing around the story.
From what I’ve observed with myself and others, whether in male or female circles, gossip often stems from a small, selfish impulse: to feel better about ourselves, to gain a quick hit of satisfaction at someone else’s expense. In the worst cases, it becomes a tool for social sabotage and cruelty. I was tempted to include a real-life example of gossip poisoning a workplace culture in a shop in Amsterdam, but I won’t. Because that would be gossip, wouldn’t it?
What I want to say is this: let’s be more precise when we talk about gossip. Not every conversation in someone’s absence counts. And let’s not put gossip on a pedestal. We’re human, yes, and therefore flawed. But there are nobler, more lasting foundations for building or maintaining relationships and for fostering cooperation—whether romantic, platonic, or professional—than the, I’m sorry, cheap currency of hearsay.
As Roland Barthes wrote in A Lover’s Discourse, even casual gossip reduces the subject to a mere he, she, or they. “An intolerable reduction for me,” he calls it. He goes further still, calling gossip “by nature akin to murder... as if I saw the other dead, reduced, shelved in an urn upon the wall of the great mausoleum of language.” That may sound dramatic, but he has a point. When we speak unkindly about someone in their absence, we reduce them to something less than who they are. It’ll probably take a fair bit of filtering, old habits die hard after all, but I’m going to try what Susie does.
Love,
Naomi
Extra:
Amsterdam folk. The most arrogant people.
Podcast suggestion: Desert Island BBC.
Soft Deadline Stories: a fiction writing project on Substack you will follow if you’re cool.
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