Gossip is Good

The ethical guide to talking smack.

Missy Elliott’s remarkable “Gossip Folks” music video.

One of my favourite jobs ever was my first job, behind the counter, at Tim Hortons. On weekends, when I was not preoccupied with homework or Tae Kwon Do or partying or Kingdom Hearts, I’d punch in to happily serve my community their coffees and doughnuts through a drive through window. Fourteen and equipped with a drive thru headset, you couldn’t tell me shit. I had the double doubles on lock and the glazed pastries in the box. The chaotic people who worked there were the best part of the gig. I’d spend my shifts eavesdropping as employees detailed their personal drama over chilli and chicken salad. The doughnut baker slept with the new cashier? The manager is going through a divorce? The soup and sandwich dude sells pot? Tell me more, sweetie. Each shift I’d pour coffee and spill tea, recounting things I heard other employees say. Strangely, the people and their stories stuck with me. There are times, years later, where my mind wonders if the woman who trained me is doing alright. If my work-wife ever bought that house she was saving up for, if the manager ever found love. Yes, Tim Hortons gave me the income needed to buy Nike Dunks but also gave me insight into how people lived their lives. America runs on Dunkin,’ Canada runs on Tims and I ran on gossip.

---

Talking shit is so damn fun. There’s a special alchemy that unites new people when sharing a secret of their interior lives. Spilling tea, be it to a life-long friend or with a new comrade, is akin to ‘opening the kimono,’ a vulnerable exchange where if I show you mine, you better show me yours. Gossip reveals a shared political agenda, enabling me access to your discernments for mutual compatibility. Do we find the same things amusing? Are we both preoccupied with the same, divergent choices of the people we discuss? It’s a value exchange that illustrates our values and opinions through stories of ourselves and others. In some cases, gossip has been linked to survival and lower homicide rates. It’s like, we tell each other gossip in order to live… or whatever that Joan Didion quote is.

Despite its bonding powers, gossip is perceived to be a social vice. In secular and religious societies, gossip is a bipartisan issue, viewed as destructive, unproductive and amoral. The Qu’ran ushers believers to repent when receiving and sharing gossip: “Oh you who believe! If a wicked person comes to you with any news, ascertain the truth, lest you harm people unwittingly, and afterwards become full of repentance for what you have done.” (Qur'an 49:6). Unsurprisingly, the Bible also advises against gossip with Proverbs 16:28 stating: “A dishonest man spreads strife and a whisperer separates close friends.” 

While this may be true in some instances, these are constrained viewpoints in relation to talking smack. It is accurate that gossip can be divisive but, in many instances, it actually keeps friends together. By sharing precious, sacred information, alliances remain intact in co-conspiracy. Spreading gossip can connote trust and vulnerability as it unearths the tendons of our intimate relationships for excavation. The American Psychological Association supports the sharing of secrets within reason. Postdoctoral researcher Sarah Ward implores that “sharing secrets is often a way to build trust or closeness. Knowing which people tend to share can help to identify who is likely to build close relationships, and who might be missing opportunities to foster closeness and trust.” And so, the next time someone warns you that “secrets don’t make friends,” you can tell them they are both right and wrong.

In contemporary society, there is a particular saying that goes “Small minds discuss people, great minds discuss ideas.” The premise behind this is that only intellectuals are capable of discussing concepts larger than people while bird-brained idiots gossip. I, a bird-brained intellectual, disagree. This line of thinking is flawed as it divorces the individual from the idea and assumes that ‘Big Picture Thinking’ can only exist in theory, amputated from reality. In order to construct and discuss great ideas that can function in society, one must have a firm understanding of those who will live through the great idea. And that comes with an in-depth knowledge of who people are, what values they hold and their precise whereabouts at 11:34PM on Tuesday evening. 

If gossip were to be reframed as ‘sharing stories about ourselves and those in our lives,’ much of the culture we consume is tied to the idea of gossip. Popular culture is a collection of community and commercial artifacts reflected in media, novels, podcasts and other entertainment that’s emblematic of the times. Upon inspection, much of our cultural history’s mosaic is composed of stories of people, whether that be discourse around a problematic late-night talk show host or a retrospective documentary on the treatment of a child actor. Pop culture, like other humanities such as sociology and psychology, serves as a mirror to society. By keeping a pulse on what the streets are saying, we can gain a keen understanding of our collective sensibilities.

In order to unpack the functional role of pop culture and gossip in our society, I asked one of my favourite people to gossip with, Ira Madison III, host of the pop culture podcast Keep It! and writer of Frank Substack to share his thoughts:

“Try as we might to pretend gossip is beneath us, it’s actually the invention of the Hollywood machine as we know it. It makes gods out of mortals. Why do we care about Pete Davidson? Because he dates Ariana Grande. The gossip machine fueled his fame. People try to pretend that we as civilized society should care more about Huma Abedin than George Clooney. There were a lot of funny articles about that when they started dating and got married. But riddle me this. Does the average person , or even the culturally proficient person, know a damn thing about Huma aside from her connections to Hillary, George, and that bitch Anthony Weiner? No. But we did for a brief moment. And that’s gossip.”

But gossip, even when overtly referenced in culture, is often feminized pejoratively and withheld the degree of respect other humanities are given. We view Gossip Girl as superficial, scheming and toxic. Old wives tales are unverified, witchy and superstitious. The View is perceived to be daytime junk for womanly babble while the men of late night are beloved, cultural behemoths. John Oliver is as equally concerned with gossip as Wendy Williams is. Some of John Oliver’s most watched YouTube videos for Last Week Tonight are sassy, pulpy diatribes, such as the inquisitive dive into the annals of the Miss America pageant to his humorous take-down of the Kushners. Ladies, fellows, gentlethems, this is tea! That’s gossip! And although Oliver’s delivery is drastically different from Williams’ Hot Topics, it must be recognized that both are incredibly important scholars of the moments we are living in. 

Last week, on a warm Tuesday evening, I went out to dinner with a new friend in my neighbourhood. As the final plates arrived, we began discussing our favourite podcasts which led to them encouraging me to listen to a podcast I never heard of before: Normal Gossip. The premise of Normal Gossip is as the name suggests, normal people gossiping. Each episode recounts and dissects listener-submitted gossip gouged from the lives of strangers. Naturally, I binged it. Similar to This American Life, each episode unearths a candy-coated nugget about humanity that, like good gossip, you can’t help but pass along. I relished in how mundane, how ‘every day’ the circumstances felt, and yet, it also felt high stakes and dramatic, like actual celebrity gossip. There is a red thread between the tea shared on Normal Gossip and the celebrity coverage heard on Keep It! as the people discussed are strangers to me. Yes, I know who Taylor Swift and Joe Alwyn are but I actually don’t know them, know them. And yet, even though the folks examined on Normal Gossip are also unknown to me, they could easily be you or my neighbour, my high school English teacher or just about anyone else who is more relatable than an international pop star and her actor ex-boyfriend. One of my favourite aspects of the show is that the host, Kelsey McKinney, will gossip about the gossiper who submitted the story and challenge their credibility and decision-making skills. This judgement establishes the unique, meta-narration of Goss-ception (lol sorry) for the podcast, in which we hear how the stories we share of others are dismantled and put back together for our own analysis and entertainment. I’d suggest listening to one of the latest episodes about a Facebook group for a dog park. It is equal parts absurd and riveting and I need it adapted into an A24 limited series immediately. 

Some of the questions I ask when ethically engaging in the act of tea spilling are ‘Do you trust the source?’ and ‘What are the receipts?’ It can be rather difficult to confirm the validity of hearsay, especially without implicating the source but, if I’m honest, the inability to discern the exact truth is what makes gossip so entertaining. Gossip is the gooey taffy that borders fact and fiction. It is shapeless as it is grey and begs you to litigate the merit of the story. My friend Terence often warns that “the optics are more powerful than the truth” and I believe this is what is so entrancing about gossip. It forces you to imagine what could have happened beyond on the evidence presented. It’s a dangerously fun perspective to occupy. To help guide you through this, consider the following LOOSEY legislation:

LOOSEY’s Ethical Guide To Talking Shit

1. A trusted space is critical. From the person who is receiving the gossip to the place where the tea is being spilled, you must be certain that there will be no leaks. There’s nothing worse than hearing goss that you dished repeated back to you by someone else. No one likes a rat ;)

2. Put out or get out. If someone shares gossip with you, it’s only customary for you to share something back. I actually trust someone less who doesn’t gossip because, like, what are you really thinking? 

3. Voice notes. Voice notes are my favourite way to share juicy doses of tea. If you see that I have sent you a voice note, first of all, congratulations. You’re in for the ride of your life. Second of all, get some headphones. I don’t need my regurgitation of other people’s business out in the streets. The best part about voice notes is that they self-destruct. It’s widely understood that it’s bad practice to have voice notes that automatically save. Don’t be that guy.

4. Receipts add credibility. Qur’an 17:36 reads “Do not concern yourself with things about which you have no knowledge. Verily, your hearing, sight, and heart — all of them will be called to account." I agree with this! If you have no knowledge, shut your mouth. But if you have a receipt or even a morsel of evidence, it’s fair game and I’m listening. 

5. Finally, embellish! The point of gossip is that it's supposed to be a bit off from the truth. Missing a key detail? Make something up to hype up the story! Tea should be served hot and delicious. If it’s lukewarm and tasteless, consider heating it up and adding some sweetener. 

In conclusion, Rachel Aviv of The New Yorker writes that “gossip may be the beginning of moral inquiry, the low end of the platonic ladder which leads to self-understanding. We are desperate for information about how other people live because we want to know how to live ourselves." With this in mind, perhaps gossip isn’t in opposition to most major religious doctrines but actually in support of it. If spirituality’s ultimate goal is actualization and empathy across humanity, perhaps gossip can be a helpful tool. And so, gossip is analogous to gospel and, baby, the good word is spreadin’ fast.