Let’s Talk About You: Why We Love to Gossip

Doreen* says she’s sorry to hear my friend’s cancer has returned (it hadn’t.) Someone else lets it be known a mutual acquaintance is getting hair plugs and liposuction. Mia listens to me kvetch about an in-law. She passes on Felicia’s health concerns and we both agree that Franny’s online posts are getting weirder, right?

Chisme, as gossip is called in Mexico, is like – how to say this politely – passing gas; everyone does it, but everyone pretends they don’t. Although we prefer euphemisms such as “venting,” “updating,” “offering opinions,” the definition of gossip doesn’t vary: discussing someone who isn’t present. It can be as benign as proudly announcing your child’s graduation or hurtful enough to destroy reputations.

No community is immune, including our little village here. It’s not because we’re mostly older, retired and allegedly have more time on our hands. From Latvia to London, church groups, children’s playgrounds and probably Buddhist monasteries, we can’t help but indulge in a little chin-wagging about mutual acquaintances.

The Torah condemns it. So does the Bible and the Qur’an. Despite moral and religious tut-tutting and our all-too-human attempts to avoid it, talking about someone behind their back is almost irresistible. Anthropologists and social scientists posit that we are hard-wired to do so, a prehistoric survival skill that provided a way to build trust and social cohesion within the clan. We’re like chimps that use grooming and picking lice off each other to bond with their troop. Be they apes or humans, primates who do not indulge will eventually find themselves socially ostracized.

And scientists now know what people refuse to admit: dishing the dirt feels good. A research paper published on the National Institute of Health’s Library of Medicine website revealed that when we engage in tattling (or sharing observations about someone, call it what you will), our oxytocin – the feel-good hormone – levels rise and our cortisol – stress hormone – levels drop. In other words, gossip is the frosted fudge brownie of communication, just another guilty pleasure.

Presently and historically, women bear the onus as gossipmongers and have paid the price, including draconian punishments in the 1500s. But global research company OnePoll surveyed over 5,000 people and discovered that men gossip more than women (an average of 76 minutes a day versus women’s 52 minutes).

The majority – about 75% – of our discussion falls in the neutral category, merely transferring information about others that makes no moral judgment, i.e. who got married, who’s bringing baked beans to the Sunday potluck, who went on which diet.

But what happens when words neither positive nor neutral are no longer limited to the sewing circle or water cooler? Thanks to social media’s global coverage, millions or even billions can salivate over the most humiliating revelations, memes or YouTube videos of both famous and once-anonymous individuals.

Young people have long since abandoned Facebook to their grandparents, so it has become the jungle drums for us senior citizens of Lakeside. Facebook was my lifeline for vital information upon moving here. House cleaners, dog sitters, best restaurants and countless other questions asked and answered helped grease the wheels as I adjusted to my new surroundings.

But between menus, events and other noteworthy updates slithers the malice of rumors, innuendos and falsehoods about community members. What was once whispered over the fence is now served up for everyone to digest, truth be damned. Do-gooders are accused of stealing from their organizations, restaurants boycotted because of one-sided reports. Details are gobbled up and reposted without confirmation. Although these posts are in the minor, the damage they do can be devastating.

We are entertained by human foibles because humans host a shadow side, one that resonates with author and playwright Dorothy Parker’s famous quote, “If you can’t say something nice about someone, come sit here by me.”

Hopefully, we each have a moral standard of what is acceptable to pass along. But when offered an array of conversational topics, most of us are eventually going to reach for the brownie.

*All names have been changed.

 Kelly Luker lives in Ajijic and is the author of Private Eye for the Bad Guy, a memoir of her career as a criminal defense investigator.