The Gossip about Gossip

Sit with me. Chat with me. And we will find gossip, soonly. 

But prompt me and I freeze. Possibly a good/safety mechanism because you see, I don’t like to gossip… 

So I searched a little and apparently, the academic gossip about gossip is that while it is a “highly common speech act in informal groups”, it is shocking how “sociologists’ attempts to examine its nature and structure are so rare.” In sociology, it represents a legitimate research problem and is defined as "a general interest in the doings, the virtues and vices of others". Trite.  

Gossip apparently also helps maintain and strengthen social bonds, i.e. promotes social solidarity. On this, it has certainly delivered in my life. 

While in the UK, I employed the usual weather small talk trope to break the ice with my friend’s husband. He was sweet but appeared to be a little reserved (initially). I often found myself hanging out with both of them. The people pleaser in me was desperate to make him like me and talk to me: in my mind, they were my local guardians/parents (even if they were exactly my age). So one day, I asked him to tell me some gossip about his workplace (the glamorous world of finance). He felt awkward, confused and a little shy. But then he searched deep for one piece of gossip and found himself enjoying revealing a seemingly petty story about one of his colleagues. I no longer remember any details but I remember we followed up each time we met. I am happy to report we built a friendship beyond gossip updates. 

Work-related gossip (and shared trauma) also laid the foundation for special friendships from my first job. Even though none of us work together or at that organisation any more, we seem to find one strand of gossip to fuel every time we meet up over happy hours (alcoholic and otherwise). My (first) boss terrified me and I still get goosebumps if I think they’re nearby. But I maintain a general interest in the doings and the vices, not so much the virtues. In this particular job, some senior colleagues had low-key gossiped about their assumption that my friend N & I were dating when really, I was his beard. Because two young adults of the opposite sex who enjoy coffee and ordering desserts must be dating. 

Gossip, as it turns out, is good for my physical health. It powered walks at my previous job and helped me achieve my daily 10,000 steps. Work from home has me hitting about 2500, unless I get a call, “You’ll never believe what just happened…”.  

My close friends and I gossip. We are social media sleuths with a disturbingly keen eye for patterns. We are constantly in possession of pointless, superfluous information about the lives of distant classmates and their loved ones. This pattern analysis isn’t available for free on Substack of course, you’ll have to contact us privately.

Sometimes though, silly pieces of gossip about people who no longer mean anything to me, live rent free in my mind: Did you notice H (my high school crush) and A (their purported best friend) are posting from the same place without tagging each other? Are they dating? We spoke 7 months ago, so I knew H had a visa appointment for (redacted) which appears to be the location of these photos. I wonder if D (close friend from class 2 till class 2) ever joined the air force like his father, his inspiration. Never mind that I know he moved away when we were 7 years old and don’t remember his last name. Whatever happened between the stranger couple who were fighting outside Select Citywalkmall? The girl let out some visceral growls to show her anger at her partner (I get it). The auto walahs were scared and paved a path for them to pass through.

Gossip can occasionally be rather life affirming. Usually this is secondary gossip from the lives of strangers… conversations overheard in cafes, queues, airport waiting areas, metro journeys, elevator rides etc. that make you believe that you’re not alone in your struggle to set boundaries with family, building relationships with the family you’ve married into, wonder how some people do it all when you sleep and wake up on time once a year, bitching about the Ambani wedding… Is it any wonder that I’m a qualitative researcher?

Have I heard gossip about me? Of course I have. I largely enjoy it. It gives me a glimpse into people’s perception of my potential. An old schoolmate recently bumped into me and asked me when I returned to India after all those years in Singapore… (a country I was only ever in for 5 days as a 12 year old). My current favorite is hearing the salon staff whispering that I must be a medical doctor because I usually look hassled, always in a hurry, and never seemed to have time to get beauty treatments regularly.

P.S. - Many details have been altered :) To limit gossip, of course.