What Is Gossip And Why Can It Be Dangerous?

Gossip: We’ve all heard some and spread some. In more traditional, conservative times, they disrupted entire families. Today they circulate in a different way because our ways of communicating have also changed.

The fact is that gossip has the ability to create enormous disorder. This often happens, both on a social and personal level. Nobody likes to be the subject of gossip because gossip is rarely spread with good intentions. They are often hidden messages in a sense.

What are gossip?

Normally they are  oral messages: they are words. The paradox here is that there is no evidence to support these messages. However, the more people spread a gossip, the more people come to see it as the truth. In this way they follow a kind of law: if you repeat something often enough, people will automatically believe it.

The source of the gossip is often difficult to pinpoint. This is partly due to the fact that the specific words of the gossip often change over time. Do you know the so-called telephone game? A number of people sit in a circle, and one of them comes up with a sentence. This sentence is whispered softly from person to person, the latter having to say what he or she has finally understood. It often happens that the final sentence does not resemble the original sentence at all. This is often the case with gossip.

In the beginning it is often about a small thing or doubt about something. “I’ve heard they’re going to fire people,” or “Anna didn’t show up today and she’s been sad all week. I think she’s depressed…”

What rules do gossip follow?

However, our brains prefer certainties over hypotheses. So what was first a hypothesis eventually becomes a kind of dogma. Now to put an end to defining gossip, let’s share the following list. This one contains the general rules that gossip follows:

• Confidentiality:  The source is unknown. Incidentally, it has also been scientifically proven that people forget the source of knowledge rather than the knowledge itself.
• Certainty:  We rarely doubt gossip simply because of the amount of effort it takes. Moreover, no one likes to doubt someone who assures us that he or she is telling the truth.
• Curiosity:  The gossip arouses our curiosity. This could be because it concerns us, or because it concerns a scandal.
• Speed:  A gossip’s ability to accelerate and multiply makes it unstoppable.

• Proximity:  Gossip is shared within relationships.
• Change:  You can think of them as trees. New gossip branch out, filling gaps left by the original gossip.
• Viral in nature. Each recipient is a possible potential transmitter of the information. The recipient often also adds his own opinion during the transmission. The manner and intonation also changes between each two people.

How can we put an end to gossip?

The answer is as simple as it is impossible: keep people from communicating. Of course you can’t! A realistic alternative is also difficult, but slightly more feasible. This alternative would be that  we have to be critical of all the information we receive.

We must ask ourselves whether the source of the information is reliable. If possible, ask the person from whom you heard the gossip whether they fully trust the information themselves. We should also think about whether the gossip is for the benefit of someone and whether he or she is the originator of it.

One gossip to be especially careful with is the kind that concerns minority groups or other defenseless people. That is why it is also said that history is written by the victors. The first price the losers have to pay is that the victor’s version is the story people will hear. Just think of the dictatorships that ravaged Europe in the first half of the 20th century.

However, we don’t need to travel through time. Here in the present we can also see that  many stereotypes about marginalized people are systematically maintained by gossip. Gossip maintains prejudice and discrimination.