Well, that explains why I don’t need reality TV. We live in the same city as most of my husband’s extended family. They are numerous and all up in each other’s (and our) business. Plenty of drama. Plenty of gossip.

As weird as it is to say that gossiping about other people’s sex lives can actually make you more sympathetic to their health needs, I think there’s a lot of truth to that.  When the person who has an STD is someone you know, it’s much easier to feel that person deserves treatment, because hey, despite their flaws you like them and don’t want them to suffer.  When the pregnant teenage girl is your neighbor’s daughter, that’s easy to relate to, and you can feel their need to have readily available abortion services.

I think there was a study recently that found that people who watched one of those teen mom shows were more likely to support access to abortion.

You should have gotten that book deal, Amanda, this was a fantastic piece.

For one thing, reality TV producers go out of their way to tweak the story to “say” certain things,

That’s an understatement if I’ve ever read one :D

I realize I’m using gossip to illustrate this idea, but some friends knew a contestant on The Bachelor. I can’t remember how she ended up on the show, like maybe her friend was doing it and she showed up at the audition to support her friend and the producers talked her into it, but anyhow she was an accomplished doctor, very independent, very driven, and they put her in this house where she was immediately miserable. I guess the mansion itself was filthy to the point of infestation, and they more or less starved the contestants to keep them skinny but kept plenty of tequila and hard liquor on hand so there would be plenty of scandalous stuff to tape. So she finally got eliminated from the show, and when they were doing the exit interview she was elated to get out of there, but they didn’t want that! They wanted her to cry, and feel bad that she was rejected by The Bachelor! Because that was her highest purpose, to be chosen by a man! So they basically kept her in that exit interview all night, trying to get her to cry, and she wouldn’t, so they finally dug through some of her background material and came up with the fact that she was very driven and wanted her parents to be proud of her, so they started asking her about her parents, and digging into how her parents would feel about her failing at something and basically bullied her into crying, and they used that footage to make it look like she was devastated that the Bachelor didn’t pick her because “she had failed [him].”

I don’t know that I agree with the idea that suburban living necessarily breeds isolation.  I’ve lived pretty isolatedly in an urban environment for about 6 years now.  I have no family here, and I have only a handful of friends.  I don’t talk to my neighbors, because no one talks to their neighbors.  There is no community inherent in living in a more urban environment.

Totally agree that gossip can feed empathy. I first realized I was pro-choice (not that I was anti- before, just didn’t know one way or another) after hearing gossip about a girl who gave her baby up for adoption. However, I’m not so sure that gossip functions all that differently in an urban environment, though. I live in the heart of SF, and rarely talk to my neighbors. I have friends and gossip with them, but I also had very similar friend and gossip networks when I lived in the odiously suburban part of Dallas.

I would argue that all of us, no matter where we live, are in danger of losing out on human interaction via a combination of factors, not all of which are bad.  There’s the fact that people are expected to work longer hours, at the same time that large numbers of people are unemployed (and unemployment is horribly isolating).  Parents are expected to ferry their children around to activities instead of letting them be, which eats up time (Amanda talks about this all the time).  But on the positive side, social media contributes to some of this isolation too, by creating a different type of conversation that doesn’t involve quite as much wink-and-nudge gossiping, though I’m sure it still goes on.  When you’re online, you’re not at the water cooler; I would argue you’re having more fun because you chose the friends instead of just happening to work with them.

The problem with some suburbs is that everything is laid out so far apart as to exacerbate the problem.  An extra hour of driving the kids to school is an extra hour of isolation.  As the unapologetic cityphile Atrios endlessly notes, not all suburbs are the same, and it is possible to make them less isolating.  And sometimes strong bonds among people show up where you least expect, because every community is different; maybe there’s a community theater or a YMCA with good youth programs.

And churches do play this role too, for good or ill.

In fact, I would argue that suburban gossip is more common, because there are narrower strictures telling people what is acceptable behavior and who is acceptable. So there’s more incentive to put the kibosh down on deviousness via the gossip mill. By contrast, the city is more of a live-and-let-live place.

I meant deviancy, not deviousness.

shinobi42 has gotten it - no one talks to their neighbors any longer, and it’s not a simple artifact of suburbanization (although it’s a major contributor).  I wouldn’t know anyone in my new town if it wasn’t for my daughter’s school, although none of them approaches gossip-level familiarity with me.

If you really prefer privacy - like me - you can’t complain much.

Cities are definitely less gossip-oriented because there’s just more to do. When I lived in the city, I had a really hard time making friends because people don’t want strangers striking up casual conversations with them in the city. But no one was up in anyone else’s business which I really liked. Now I live in a small town and the gossip here is off the charts, but my social circle is massive. I can walk most places I need to go (this was important), but the fact is that this is a few thousand people in about a mile and a half square. It’s really hard to stay above it but there is a fine line between Gossip and News, and when there are toxic people who could genuinely make your life hard if you let them into your social circle, gossip can be a good way to inoculate yourself from them.

I’m reminded of both “1984” and “Fahrenheit 451” and the way the video screen is used, not to connect people, but to alienate and distance people from one another. Bradbury saw literature - something that you experience all alone in your own subjectivity - as the force the brings people together. To see the human body mediated through the screen gives a false sense of superiority and ‘judgement’ - of what has become mediated into an aesthetic object.

Literature lets us see inside the mind of Winston Smith, while the video screen broadcasting his confession puts us into a position of judgement. And there is of course the famous “Three minute hate” sessions in 1984. The only thing Orwell got wrong is that there was no need for people to gather together to watch - that would interfere with the project of alienation. I think the popularity of quasi court shows like Judge Judy just skims the surface of this idea - that we sit in judgement as onlookers.

t-ster, not all gossip is necessarily about shaming and controlling.  Like I note in the piece, a lot of it is simply talking about what other people are up to.

Anyway, I live in the biggest city in the country, and a solid percentage of my conversation with others is “did you hear?”  I can safely say it’s not all bad stuff, either. It’s also passing word of who’s dating who, who got what job, who’s sick and well, etc.  Even who got a cute new pet.

Also, while anyone can get isolated anywhere—-I acknowledge this in the post—-I’m not talking about individuals.  I’m talking about aggregates and trends.  In the big picture, suburbs are clearly the most isolating.  Some more than others, of course, but suburban geography and life is geared towards minimizing contact with others.  The big houses and sprawl discourage drop-ins and parties.  The lack of interesting things to go and do near your house minimizes the amount of social interaction in public spaces.  The lack of sidewalks and porches minimize interaction with neighbors.  Cities encourage you to go out and do things by having things to go out and do.  People come along with that territory more.  Small towns, well, I think their sociability is obvious. But same thing.  I never spent as much time at home as I did when I lived in a suburb. (Which was brief, because the isolation was driving me nuts.)

idio, your incorrect assumption is that this is all about neighbors.  What cities are better at than suburbs is creating tribes based around interests.  People get out more, and in the course of pursuing interests and hobbies, they create a circle of friends.  In suburbs, the opportunities to do that are minimized. I didn’t need to know my neighbors to gossip in Austin; I had a group of friends who all knew each other. New York, even more so.

Amanda, I agree that gossip serves a necessary social function and overall is neutral and many times helpful. But based on your premise, that gossip is a way of imposing social norms, then what follows is this: if there are tighter/more restrictive social norms, you are likely to have an increased level of gossip to impose those norms. There might be equal levels of “did you know Kathy just had surgery” gossip in cities, but from my experience, there is more of the “did you hear what a slut Kathy was” gossip when I lived in the suburbs. It’s still the case; it can be hard to hang out with my high school friends who still live in those areas because a lot of their gossip is about enforcing social norms I simply don’t hold anymore.

But that doesn’t mean gossip is inherently bad as a social values transmitter either.  It’s neutral, I’d say.  I’ve seen positive social values transmitted through gossip.

I’m not sure about that as the way the word gossip is popularly used IME…it is always meant to denote the negative aspects of what you’re describing.  Moreover, every person I know who gossips about a mutual friend/acquaintance/colleague tends to do so for negative reasons whether it is to ostracize the target at best or completely destroy their reputation for their own perceived gain. 

Granted, a part of my negative regard towards gossip/gossipers has to do with hearing accounts of parents/older friends’ experiences at being persecuted because the local gossipers were on the take from your local fascist/communist secret police organizations.  From what I observed, they take an even dimmer view of those who gossip as those who not only violate boundaries in being nosy, but also those who cannot be trusted to keep confidences or not to sell out an acquaintance/friend in an instant for their own perceived private gain. 

Another part is how every gossiper I’ve met who says they’re “just trying to be helpful” are all talk.  Some of the worst flakes I’ve met in my life when I’ve seen how they actually go about “helping” others. 

My daughter is… addicted to might be too strong, but interested in is probably too weak… reality shows like “Real Housewives of…” and “Say Yes to the Dress” and others that show on Discovery, etc. (not usually anything on MTV - for which I’m thankful).

I don’t really understand the attraction, or what she gets out of watching those often appalling people.  The fact that these shows are less spontaneous/more scripted/carefully edited to enhance the conflict makes the attraction even more mystifying to me…

I agree—I’ve often thought that tabloids and reality TV replace gossip, although I never really thought about it much more deeply than that.

I’d also add that, at least around my age (24), cities are more likely to allow your existing relationships to continue.  I have some good friends who moved far away or are teaching English abroad or something.  But it’s very common for people from my hometown and from my university to move to Chicago once they’re out on their own.  It’s not unusual for me and my boyfriend to run into old classmates who turn out to be close neighbors.  And in the case of actual friends, the gossip can continue—sometimes with context stretching back to childhood.

When whole existing tribes just continue like this, it’s not that hard to make friends with a couple of people and end up apparently knowing half their graduating class.  For example, I did not stay friends with that many people from my hometown, but most of my friends from college are from two specific IL towns (well, one city and one suburb).  Because those people were able to transplant their tribe, first to a very popular school and then to a very popular city.  Much of my getting to know people in Chicago has actually been locating the people I already know.

This is an intriguing insight, and I think it far predates reality television.  For fifty years, people have gossiped on the phone about the most recent developments on General Hospital or As The World Turns.  Television has amazing power to provide us with a cast of characters whom we feel we know better than our actual friends.

I suppose if you are the sort of person who likes to gossip, not the good gossip, but the up in somebody’s business judging, I can see how you would be drawn to the skeevy type of reality tv. I for one, do not get it. My husband started a new job at a high school and he says there is a big group of teachers, women, who subscribe to all the trashy mags and watch all the crap tv and then gossip about it over lunch. You’d think from hearing they way they talk that they actually knew the celebrities.

I’m not sure about that as the way the word gossip is popularly used IME…it is always meant to denote the negative aspects of what you’re describing.  Moreover, every person I know who gossips about a mutual friend/acquaintance/colleague tends to do so for negative reasons whether it is to ostracize the target at best or completely destroy their reputation for their own perceived gain. 
Granted, a part of my negative regard towards gossip/gossipers has to do with hearing accounts of parents/older friends’ experiences at being persecuted because the local gossipers were on the take from your local fascist/communist secret police organizations. 

You are old enough to understand that the logical conclusion here is that your older relatives and family friends are not the most reliable guides when it comes to teaching you how to navigate middle class American social norms. More to the point, there’s a middle ground between “obedient child” and “rebellious teen who thinks his parents don’t know anything.”

Television has of course, been most white people’s main exposure to non-white people for decades as well.

Television has of course, been most white people’s main exposure to non-white people for decades as well.

You are old enough to understand that the logical conclusion here is that your older relatives and family friends are not the most reliable guides when it comes to teaching you how to navigate middle class American social norms.

Those aren’t family friends….but older friends I made from parents of high school classmates, friends of university Profs/colleagues, and survivors of various fascist/communist atrocities/persecutions at various academic and survivor group conferences I attended. 

After hearing their accounts and putting together what I learned from my studies of how fascist/communist and even ostensibly democratic nations’ law enforcement arms maintain surveillance on others…..my already low opinion of gossipers was lowered further.  Why is it that gossipers in any given neighborhood are favored friends of the secret police/law enforcement….or in the cast of the former….even assigned officially as “block wardens” to watch for any signs of deviance/dissent against prevailing social orthodoxy.

For fifty years, people have gossiped on the phone about the most recent developments on General Hospital or As The World Turns

Or even earlier than that, the soap opera on the radio made entertainment available to anyone with a radio set who lived in a broadcast area, so that from Bangor, ME to San Ysidro, CA, people could hear the same story being acted although they were separated by class, geography, race, etc.

In the 19th Century, people went to the docks when a ship from England was due with the latest installment of a Charles Dickens serialized novel, which I would call a similar kind of phenomenon.  He may, in fact, be thought of as one of the forebearers of the soap opera.

Amanda, I once read a piece where some scientists had worked out that, in a band of higher primates(think chimps, our ancestors, etc) there was an upper limit on the number of members of a single band if it was based on grooming for social cohesion, I think about 150 or so members.

Gossip, OTOH, can bring together masses of people as long as they speak the same language, so the conclusion was that gossip was a social invention to overcome the limitations of social cohesion based on mutual grooming.

Of course, being relatively hairless reduces the need for grooming itself, but that’s a topic for another day.

I would argue that gossip is one of the primary ways that human beings communicate social values.

I agree that gossip communicates social values, but I’d point out that since it’s mostly fear and peer-pressure based that the “values” that get communicated are almost always about breakdowns in or exemplars of facades.  It’s also a fucking breeding ground for trying-to-pass hyperbole and intolerance—more declarations of what people are afraid will be thought of them if “everyone knew about me.”

Instead of just acting offended at the very existence of gossip, I think progressives would be wiser to see it as an opportunity to inject their own values into the gossip mill.

Well, this is possible.  You have to be willing to take an awful lot of cold and/or nervous silences, avoidance, and added scrutiny.  That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it.  We actually should.  The trick, though, is to find a way to do it so you don’t get cast in the “he/she’s so outrageous” stereotype that’s a) thoroughly enjoyed and even accepted but b) gets totally disregarded because you’re just saying how things might be once the bell was on the cat.

When the person who has an STD is someone you know, it’s much easier to feel that person deserves treatment, because hey, despite their flaws you like them and don’t want them to suffer.  When the pregnant teenage girl is your neighbor’s daughter, that’s easy to relate to, and you can feel their need to have readily available abortion services.

This is true but isn’t necessarily “sticky.”  Dan Quayle’s temporary softness on abortion, George Will and Sarah Palin’s sympathy for special needs children, Rick Perry and other absolutist ‘wingers willingness to seek disaster assistance are all extraordinarily prone to reversion to the mean when subjected to… either private or public gossip.

Again, that doesn’t mean gossip can’t help change values.  It just means it’s waaaaaaay harder than anyone would like to think.  And since it tends to have a ratchet in the direction of parsimony rather than acceptance that reversion to the mean thing is difficult to overcome. (Incidentally, I think parsimony works better than “conservatism” because while gossip really does trend towards politically conservative norms you can see the same ratcheting on college campuses and politically liberal neighborhoods even if it’s in a non-conservative direction.)

Still, I’m going to take what you’ve said under advisement.  I’ve tended to avoid gossip circles like the plague I still believe they overall are.  But if I can stick my neck out in political venues, and if I lie awake nights worrying about the breakdown of social civility, then the least I can do is risk behind-the-back flaying on the gossip circuit as well.  I’m just not looking forward to it.

figleaf

For those who are doubting the positive possibilities of gossip, may I present some anecdata? When I was in college, I lived in one of the most “freak-friendly” dorms on campus, the (of course) arts dorm. My group of friends ranged along a political spectrum from Staunch Party Democrats at the most conservative to self-proclaimed Anarcho-Feminists at the extremes, and as a result we had a whole lot of sexual, gender, etc etc experimentation going on pretty much all the time. And let me tell you, the gossip was GREAT. Of course it was all about who was hooking up with who (and who else, and who else…), but also who was failing their classes because of their exploits, who was dealing with what mental health or physical health issues…etc, you know how gossip goes. I mean, we loved it so much we had a “Gossip Closet” which was kind of a joke, but I was also actually pulled in there at parties so I could get the latest dish. And I have to say, for the most part the gossip really reinforced positive decision-making and safe experimentation. Many a person was surrounded by support because the gossip consensus became that they weren’t making it by themselves. I myself (coming from conservative suburbia) found the courage to experiment and explore only because I kept hearing about everyone else’s exploits described in such detail, and everyone just made it sound like so much fun. For us anyway, being at the center of gossip was just expected—if you weren’t being gossiped about, it was because you weren’t really part of the group.

I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m obviously aware of the many ways in which gossip can be toxic. I think we all are. But the whole holier-than-thou (and it certainly has its roots in religious edicts) position of “oh, gossip, I would never do such a thing” is not only obnoxious, it’s really unrealistic. I think a lot of the reason gossip is so denigrated is that it is marked as “feminine.”  But, and I can’t remember who did this study, but someone looked at how gossip functions in a particular context (a group of Arab women in Egypt, maybe?) and found that it was really essential to organizing the community, and reinforcing social norms—positive and negative. There’s no way we’re ever going to get away from it—gossip is just inherently human, and like Amanda said, we liberals can capitalize on that as a means of spreading our own social norms.

Uggh.  Apologies for my worse than usual syntax in the first sentence of #27.

@Amanda #13: I agree that there’s a lot of pleasantry in gossip, including who’s got a cute new pet.  My concern, as I perhaps poorly expressed it, is that whereas gossip isn’t overall negative the positive parts (cute pets, who had a nice time with that new person) is largely filler when it comes to values transmission.

And sweet mother of pearl just watch what happens to someone who falls out of a gossip circle when, say, her socially-connected husband leaves her or, worse, when it’s learned she had something like a fling, or even worse than that, when he or she confirms what’s previously been “harmless” gossip and comes out.  It’s not as bad as social consequences in, say, Ten Commandments type cultures where people are literally stoned.  But it’s still pretty fucking bad.

figleaf

I think to get an American perspective, exholt, you need to read Winesburg, Ohio, Main Street, or any number of short stories and/or novels about American small towns.

There, you will discover how an informal network can be as stifling or punishing as any official one, , a self-organized network dedicated to keeping the status quo in place can and does work without having to involve any official governmental action at all.

Although the former novel takes place in the American NE, and Main Street takes place in an imaginary state, I recognized the same petty-mindedness, the same intrusiveness, that my cousin from Windom, TX described from her life and my observations of living in a small town in the San Joaquin Valley.

A lot of journalists have made note of a group of old ladies in red armbands that regularly make an appearance on Chinese streets when the Chinese government needs to say, “Hey, we’re watching you.”

For example, a writer for the Atlantic saw this a couple of months ago, in the wake of the Arab Spring:

“One day in March, major boulevards in Beijing suddenly were lined with older women, bundled up in overcoats and with red armbands identifying them as public-safety patrols, who sat on stools at 20-yard intervals and kept watch for disruption. They had no practical effect except as reminders that the authorities were on guard and in control.”

Read more: The 6 Weirdest Jobs in China | Cracked.com http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-6-weirdest-jobs-in-china_p2/#ixzz1XwYvOmOt

We come from an inventive people, don’t we, exholt?

  I think the degree to which people rely on TV stars to fuel their gossip is new, but I don’t think it’s an entirely new way of doing things. Before TV and movie stars, people used to rely on the exploits of a very visible aristocracy to scratch that admire-and-judge itch. They just also tempered it with an even larger dose of gossiping about their own friends and family.

  I don’t think it’s always a bad thing to cast strangers as the characters in our morality plays. I agree that you risk losing empathy. But on the other hand, no one enjoys having their mistakes constantly, publicly rehashed just so people can teach their kids a lesson.

Is it easier to build one’s empathy muscles via gossiping or via reading blog comments?  I know which one I’d prefer.

I think to get an American perspective, exholt, you need to read Winesburg, Ohio, Main Street, or any number of short stories and/or novels about American small towns.

There, you will discover how an informal network can be as stifling or punishing as any official one, , a self-organized network dedicated to keeping the status quo in place can and does work without having to involve any official governmental action at all.

Dark Avenger,

Actually, I read that book to tutor a client who was struggling in an English lit course.  Was ok reading…but a bit too dreary/depressing not only for the reasons you cited, but also at how it reminded me of the most petty aspects of my own small town experience during my undergrad years both on and off-campus. 

Also the point you made in the second paragraph was precisely the point I was trying to make.  Informal gossipping networks are just as bad as having the formal secret police keeping tabs on you….especially if you’re “different” or merely independent/guarded about one’s privacy.  Worse….they naturally work well with official government law enforcement arms when needed as shown in recent history.

Kind of like how Libertarians don’t seem to get how the effects of large private businesses dominating a given economy can be just as bad…if not worse than their “big bad government”. 

  shinobi42-I think its not really that suburbs bred isolation but that the design of suburbs breeds isolation. Really big cities aren’t that ideal for community building either because the sheer number of people is not optimal for community building. Some might happen in neighborhoods but less so than in the past.

  The problem with suburbs is that they really amount to nothing more than a collection of houses without much of a common focus. There is no downtown. If suburbs had a sort of common area for shopping/hanging out, like many of the suburbs of New York or other places on the East Coast, than there might be more community building. Might because modern tech makes isolation pretty easy even in places optimally designed for community building.

Are these the same people who use facebook and twitter?  Because I see those avenues as full of gossipy potential that functions pretty much the same as neighbor to neighbor gossip including empathy-enhancement.

Amanda, I agree that gossip serves a necessary social function and overall is neutral and many times helpful. But based on your premise, that gossip is a way of imposing social norms, then what follows is this: if there are tighter/more restrictive social norms, you are likely to have an increased level of gossip to impose those norms.

Define “more restrictive”.  Is a person who is negatively gossiped about because she’s single and sleeping around (suburbs) more restricted than someone who is tut-tutted over when she marries at 22 because she’s pregnant (city)?  Why?  I believe one value system is certainly better than the other!  But I don’t really think gossip per se is functioning in a substantive different way in terms of setting values.

I don’t know that I agree with the idea that suburban living necessarily breeds isolation.  I’ve lived pretty isolatedly in an urban environment for about 6 years now.  I have no family here, and I have only a handful of friends.  I don’t talk to my neighbors, because no one talks to their neighbors.  There is no community inherent in living in a more urban environment.

I suspect this is just personal experience and everyone is different. I grew up in the suburbs (a bedroom community) and lived in the city, and found there was much more gossip in the suburbs. Indeed, I continued to hear the suburban gossip even after I left town.

My guess is that the extent to which you hear a lot of gossip in the city depends on whether you identify yourself in certain close-knit social groups. A lot of people live in New York but don’t travel within Amanda’s social realm; many of those people may very well find the city profoundly alienating. To each his or her own.

My guess is that the extent to which you hear a lot of gossip in the city depends on whether you identify yourself in certain close-knit social groups.

This is 100% true. I don’t even live in NYC, and I have a pretty good tap into the gossip mill about what’s going on with my relatives and members of my ethnic community there. If I actually lived in NYC, not only would I be more connected to and hearing about the social gossip, but I would also be a character within the gossip mill.

But Dilan, when we’re talking about aggregate trends “to each his own” isn’t useful in the slightest.  What’s the data?  Does your average suburbanite spend more or less time out of the house and around other people?  These are measurable things, not just “meh there’s no way to know”.

Well, there is always the Russian solution:

Under the plans, which were leaked to the daily Vedomosti newspaper, the majority of Russia’s 141 million-strong population would be concentrated in just twenty urban centres rather than sparsely spread out over one fifth of the earth’s surface as is now the case.

At the moment, ninety per cent of Russia’s towns are relatively small with a population of 100,000 people or less, many of them in remote locations. The leaked plan said such places had “no future” and were not worth developing.

Instead, it proposed relocating people to twenty giant agglomerations where Russia’s main natural resources such as oil and gas were located.

Unlike in Stalin’s day, when people were forced to move at gunpoint on the often spurious grounds that they were ‘enemies of the people’ or Nazi collaborators, relocating would be optional and encouraged on economic grounds alone.

Much of rural Russia is dying as young people move to towns and cities anyway and entire Soviet-era settlements which were built around just one or two factories are no longer economically viable.
“There is no need to fight against the current and we need to develop big cities and urban centres,” the plan said according to the newspaper.

Saddled by an obsession for central planning, the Soviets decreed that many towns and settlements be built in areas where the climate was too harsh and where the expense of providing basic utilities was unjustifiably expensive.

Analysts said the plan, which would roll back the Soviet idea of urbanising the entire country, is likely to be heavily touted by President Dmitry Medvedev as part of his agenda to modernise Russia.
“Changing the map of the country is a necessary but not simple task which needs to be done very carefully as any overreaction could lead to a fight for urban resources,” a government official was quoted as saying.

With speculation mounting about whether Mr Medvedev or Vladimir Putin, the prime minister, will run for the Russian presidency in 2012, the plan could be a useful electoral tool for Mr Medvedev according to analysts.

When the pregnant teenage girl is your neighbor’s daughter, that’s easy to relate to, and you can feel their need to have readily available abortion services.

I’m skeptical that experiencing empathy on a local level extends to empathy on a national level.  Sure, small town residents can sympathize with their neighbor’s daughter, because she’s otherwise a good girl who made a mistake, but they’re still not going to sympathize with the slutty McSluts in the cities, especially if those women aren’t white and middle class.  The result is exactly what we’ve seen in the past 28 years since Roe; anti-choicers are totally cool with abortion for themselves, their relatives, and their close friends, but everyone else can get fucked.

I would 2nd shinobi42 @ 4.  One can be just as isolated in a rural, small town, suburban or urban environment.  It really is affected by individual circumstances.
My first impulse was to say that general cultural isolation and wanting to cement a common culture across people who don’t necessarily interact directly are more the thing than sprawl itself.  There were gossip papers pre-modern suburbia.  Our medium is just different so that the gossip about celebs and such is more speedily spread and so easily made universal over an entire nation, continent, or even the world.

Amanda @ 14:

In the big picture, suburbs are clearly the most isolating.

This is not true.  Really, really rural areas isolate their residents far more.  I am sure it is true for your lived experience.  If you never lived 20 miles (or even 5 miles) out from that small town, the suburb would seem far more isolating to you than the families of the country kids you might have known would seem to be.

Of course, being relatively hairless reduces the need for grooming itself, but that’s a topic for another day.
Comment #26: Dark Avenger Guardian Chow Mein on 09/14 at 12:05 PM

Never really thought about it, but the idea of the beauty salon as gossip central mixed with the idea of primates grooming each other really does work.  Thanks for the connection.

————-

Gossip is just talking about other people you know, what they did or are doing, and what you think and how you feel about it.  That’s kind of impossible to avoid, isn’t it, if you have any social life?  It is what you make it.

I’m surprised to see this inclusion of sympathy with gossip. The gossip I’ve witnessed, and occasionally been the subject of, has been firmly mired in judgement, character assassination and a callous prioritization of scoring social points over the pain and embarrassment that gossip will cause to the subject at hand. Mind you, I’m not talking about who’s having a baby or who’s getting divorced, but really scandalous stuff. Perhaps the further the news is from someone’s experience, the most comfortable they feel sharing it because they simply can’t imagine they’ll ever get an STI or go through a public family suicide or cross-dressing scandal.

As for suburbs vs city vs rural, those categories are too vague to work for me. My experiences living in New York, Boston and Phoenix were all wildly different in terms of community and isolation. Ditto living in the rural South and rural Western NY. So many factors play into it. But I do think there’s a a greater number of communities to choose from in a city, if you’re proactive about finding and joining them.

but some friends knew a contestant on The Bachelor. I can’t remember how she ended up on the show, like maybe her friend was doing it and she showed up at the audition to support her friend and the producers talked her into it,

Sorry, no sympathy (although I wouldn’t say so to her face).  If there was ever one group of people who deserved to be treated according to a libertarian concept of employee rights, it’s competant adults who sign a contract to join a reality TV show.

You study to be a dentist, you can’t complain about having to look at gross teeth.  You become a librarian, don’t moan about being expected to handle books.  You don’t become an accountant and then moan you didn’t think you’d have to work with numbers.

You are appearing on reality TV to be biasedly portrayed as a caricature for someone’s profit.

People don’t know that, PiaToR. They really do go on thinking that people are going to see “the real them.” And this is bolstered by the NDA’s they make the contestants sign: once you appear on the show, you will get the everliving shit sued out of you if you actually make an effort to out what goes on behind the curtain. No tell-all books, no TV appearances.

It takes a pretty savvy media consumer to realize just how unreal “reality” shows really are, and there are people out there who, I dunno, went to medical school instead of becoming savvy media consumers.

Furthermore, you’re playing the very game the reality show producers WANT you to play. From what I understand, this woman didn’t go on the show because she wanted to find true love, or because she was hoping to become famous, she went on because she thought it would be an interesting time, and a fun experience. But the narrative we have for reality show contestants is that they’re all a bunch of narcissistic fame-hungry idiots, and this probably wasn’t the case for this woman. But you’re painting her with the very brush that they have handed you.

How savvy does one have to be to understand the first principle of “reality” tv:  if the subjects are aware of the camera, it’s not unscripted but just poorly scripted.

Olgierd, which would indicate a level of manipulation on the part of the subjects, not on the part of the producers. Most people who watch reality shows figure that the amount of meddling is at a minimum, where “personalities” are tossed into the mix and maybe nudged every once and a while to make it interesting. They still believe that the point of reality TV is just letting people loose on camera, and that the trainwrecks happen more or less on their own.

I’m surprised to see this inclusion of sympathy with gossip. The gossip I’ve witnessed, and occasionally been the subject of, has been firmly mired in judgement, character assassination and a callous prioritization of scoring social points over the pain and embarrassment that gossip will cause to the subject at hand. Mind you, I’m not talking about who’s having a baby or who’s getting divorced, but really scandalous stuff. Perhaps the further the news is from someone’s experience, the most comfortable they feel sharing it because they simply can’t imagine they’ll ever get an STI or go through a public family suicide or cross-dressing scandal.

What you experienced is the very working definition of the term gossip as I’ve seen in popularly used and experienced.  Most IME wouldn’t consider expressions of genuine sympathy, empathy, and concern to be gossip. 

This is actually the first time I’ve seen gossip as inclusive of positive motives and actions.  If anything, every gossip I’ve encountered only feigned those latter two emotions judging by their subsequent actions and negative consequences for their target(s) in various school, professional, and social situations. 

Nearly everyone older relative or friend has advised me to avoid gossips as much as possible and if forced to interact with them due to professional/civility reasons to keep conversations limited to harmless pleasantries to avoid accidentally disclosing anything which could result in severely negative social consequences as you’ve cited very well in your post.

But Dilan, when we’re talking about aggregate trends “to each his own” isn’t useful in the slightest.  What’s the data?  Does your average suburbanite spend more or less time out of the house and around other people?  These are measurable things, not just “meh there’s no way to know”.

On issues like this, I like to quote the old leftist law professor Duncan Kennedy (he was talking about right wing law and economics scholars, but it applies to lots of things). “It all seems to rely on data that nobody has at hand.”

Yeah, it’s theoretically measurable. In practice, not so much. How are you going to construct a statistically valid study about gossip anyway?

And since we can’t really study it, it comes down to personal experiences, and everyone’s seems to be different.

I live in a world in which people choose their Presidents based on 30 second ads.  I’ve long since accepted that a flat majority of people are not capable of understanding that someone else puts what they see on the TV up there.

Informal gossipping networks are just as bad as having the formal secret police keeping tabs on you….especially if you’re “different” or merely independent/guarded about one’s privacy.  Worse….they naturally work well with official government law enforcement arms when needed as shown in recent history.

exholt, what would you rather face?:

3 months imprisonment in a jail in NYC because of a gossip-started rumor or info that turned official

or

living in a 5,000 population small town where the informal gossip network has decided that you’re not fit to buy or sell or have anything to do with the rest of the population, and that decision is final and has no end unless you move out.

helen h.w., I believe Amanda is comparing the suburbs to the city environment, she’s not saying that the suburbs are the most isolating environment possible.

oldfeminist, you’re welcome, and I might add that such places are a leveling environment, since it serves a basic need that women need, whether young, old, rich, poor, etc.

I would argue that gossip is one of the primary ways that human beings communicate social values.  Living in a gossip-heavy community, I would rank gossip as a values-transmitter far above religious teachings, the admonishments of community leaders, and other forms of moral education like books and whatnot. Gossip seems up there with parental influence in terms of shaping values—-at least if you have a steady stream of gossip.

Yeah.  I hang out in a subculture where, although everyone does not know everyone, everyone knows of everyone, at least at second hand.  Some sociologically inclined friends have pretty much posited the same idea you have here.

I’m an unabashed watcher of reality TV, primarily the “Real Housewives” franchise and sometimes “Teen Mom.”  I don’t know whether my living situation qualifies as a small town or a suburb but I feel that I get plenty of real life community and gossip through my office and professional networks, my extended family, and also networks of friends.

I don’t think that people’s capacity for interest in other people is finite.  In other words, I am skeptical of the notion that reality TV fills a void for people who don’t have real life gossip networks.  I think perhaps city dwellers may have less time for TV generally (or at least that was my experience living in NYC) but I don’t think they or small town people are necessarily less likely to be interested in reality TV..

In many ways, I find reality TV more satisfying than gossip because one can actually see what occurred and hear directly from the protagonists.  Yes, the knowledge that producers may be manipulating certain situations behind the scenes detracts from that, but the point stands for folks like me nonetheless. 

I am also not sure I buy the idea that one is more likely to have empathy for someone one knows in real life than someone sees on reality TV.  I often find that I don’t know as much about people in my real life as one might think.  For example, I might know generally that so-and-so’s teenage daughter had a baby and that she’s having a tough time, but with reality TV, you actually get a sense of what the “Teen Mom’s” daily life is like and the pressures she is facing.

I will second the notion that gossip can be a positive social force.  I recall a recent lunch room conversation at work about the fact that none of the secretaries like working for So-and-so because he regularly screams at them.  This news was greeted with expressions of shock and horror:  “Really?!?  I guess he’s not as nice a guy as he seems.  That’s so appalling.  What’s he thinking?”  and on to, “I just don’t understand why anyone would act like that.”  Now, maybe so-and-so will never find out that people are appalled at how he treats his secretaries, but I bet anyone else hearing that conversation would think twice about mistreating a secretary.

I believe the Olympian gods served this function in classical antiquity. Just look at the way they behave in Homer. It’s an ongoing reality show, or “unreality” show, as the lives of the gods are remote from bread-eating mortals.

The early Church Fathers didn’t like classical mythology too much.

But the narrative we have for reality show contestants is that they’re all a bunch of narcissistic fame-hungry idiots, and this probably wasn’t the case for this woman. But you’re painting her with the very brush that they have handed you.

Nope.  I said “competant adults who sign the contract”. It was MP who was stating that many of them had no idea, making them idiots.  This one was a doctor, who are usually not idiots. Complete idiots.

And while signing a contract for money might *technically* make you “greedy”, it’s in the same technical sense as you, me, and nearly everyone else around us.  I signed up with my employer and contracted for a nominal 40 hours a week(*) primarily because I wanted the money. That I like my job comes in way below that.  It’s “greedy” in the same sense that wanting to be loved makes you “needy” or wanting to eat makes you “a glutton”.

That they might be narcissistic I’ll take a pass on.  Incredibly humble and talented as I am, my superior wisdom suggests I may not be a good person to comment.

(*)(WAAAAY less this week due to a stupid head cold and complications.  They are NOT kidding about ‘drink plenty of fluids’, people., and yes, I am a moron.)

3 months imprisonment in a jail in NYC because of a gossip-started rumor or info that turned official

or

living in a 5,000 population small town where the informal gossip network has decided that you’re not fit to buy or sell or have anything to do with the rest of the population, and that decision is final and has no end unless you move out.

Neither as the effects of either are IMHO…equally untenable and potentially even fatal. 

The former because spending three months in a NYC jail can be potentially fatal in itself considering the conditions* along with the negative professional/social consequences(Loss of livelihood, friends, social networks, etc).  The latter due to the fact that towns exhibiting such ostracizing attitudes have had histories of using the local law enforcement/judiciary to screw anyone who is on the outs with the town….and one cannot assume the local cops/judges will not go outside the official laws if they felt like it.  There’s a reason why small town cops and judiciaries are satirized and critiqued in many short stories, movies/TV, etc….

* Knew several neighbors and older kids in my old neighborhood who spent months or even years in various NYC jails….including Rikers.  Also knew of many more junior high classmate bullies who are now serving long stretches at Rikers or some upstate prisons for crimes such as armed robbery.

I would argue that gossip is one of the primary ways that human beings communicate social values.  Living in a gossip-heavy community, I would rank gossip as a values-transmitter far above religious teachings, the admonishments of community leaders, and other forms of moral education like books and whatnot. Gossip seems up there with parental influence in terms of shaping values—-at least if you have a steady stream of gossip.

On the individual rather than social level, it might also serve as social grooming between two language-using primates; a substitute for picking fleas out of each others fur for apes evolved to (i) worry obsessively about the most important environment they live in, the social structure of the tribe, and (ii) talk about it.  Are you a member of my tribe?  I am a member of *your* tribe. Let me reassure you I am a member of your tribe.  What is happening in our tribe?  Who is in danger?  Who can I lay? Who is a threat to me?

Maybe reality TV scratches that same itch on a personal level.

Yeah, evo-psych, whatever.

exholt, I think is risible that you think spending your undergraduate years in a college town makes you an expert on small-town dynamics, but, trust me, there wouldn’t need to be any kind of physical harm or threat to make the latter choice less tempting than the former.

Or think of the groups like the Jehovah’s Witnesses, who shun anyone who changes from being a member to a non-member of the group. No physical punishment or threat of one is used, AFAIK, but from the reports of those who have undergone the process first-hand, they may well prefer being locked up in the local hoosegow to being treated as if they don’t exist by former friends and family members still in the JW.

Knew several neighbors and older kids in my old neighborhood who spent months or even years in various NYC jails….including Rikers.  Also knew of many more junior high classmate bullies who are now serving long stretches at Rikers or some upstate prisons for crimes such as armed robbery.

Obviously they still have an influence on you if you think being locked up is one of the worse things that could happen to you.

PiatoR, if you reflect for a few moments. you’ll realize that grooming activities take some time to complete, so the upper limit of 150 members of a group bonded by such activity is a reasonable estimate, IMHO.

Whereas gossip only needs a speaker and a listener(or listeners) and as little time as one minute to ‘pass it on’, as they say in prisons here(in N.Z., they say, “pass it on, kiwi’).

So as a bonding activity, gossip can bring together many more individuals because it doesn’t need a minimum of time to complete, nor is it limited to two individuals at a time, as is grooming.

The reality shows, in addition to all of their other faults, have also elevated the idea of “narcissistic asshole” as a career path in a way that doesn’t really bode well.

So as a bonding activity, gossip can bring together many more individuals because it doesn’t need a minimum of time to complete,

You’ve never actually MET a human being, have you?

You fucker - YOU’RE the alien invader!  DIE SCUM DIE!!!

Television is what killed gossip. If you look at the time use studies, in the 50s and into the 60s, people spent time with their friends. By the 70s, they used that time to watch television instead. Now they use Facebook to pretend they are spending time with their friends which is a slight improvement. (On the plus side, television killed the Klan.)

Reality TV is the gossip media’s reaction to increased PR professionalism with regards to “celebrities”. Celebrity gossip has been around for ages. The Roman historians reported it. (Was Suetonius really in the room with Caligula and his sister?) Louis XIV’s court used gossip as a means of political control. Beau Brummel ruled the gossip columns of Regency England. In the 1980s, celebrities started hiring publicists who managed the media for them. There were no more unstaged photo ops, no more unscripted interviews, no more casual meetings to report.

Reality TV celebrities are to real celebrities, as Strawberry Shortcake is to Mickey Mouse. Mickey Mouse was a character who starred in a good number of Disney cartoons and was later turned into a celebrity and product endorser. Strawberry Shortcake was a character created as a celebrity and product endorser so she was more of a blank slate. That’s how reality TV works. It creates a fake “celebrity” and writes good old fashioned, juicy celebrity gossip about him or her. (Remember, reality shows are scripted. The writers just don’t get the same credits or cash as the writers for scripted shows.)

Given there have been “famous people” for a long time, I’m not so convinced that reality shows are replacing gossip.

I am with Amanda on the idea that gossip is a major enforcer of social norms. I also agree with the people who are saying it does this by way of in-group vs out-group reinforcement. Gossip is the inevitable result of there existing a community, so I’m not sure it goes away in any way other than social isolation.

As Amanda said, in the city you can find lots of people who are like minded to form a “tribe” and there is a lot of gossip in the “tribe” to reenforce these norms.  How tolerant that community is and how many norms they feel they need to enforce are going to have a major influence on what you think of gossip, I suspect. Fall in with a community that has a strong antagonism to the boat being rocked, or any “leader” of the community being criticized in any way that isn’t low-grade warning gossip, and you are likely to have an unpleasant view.

In group vs out group sorting by tribal marker is a major way humans organize themselves, and they reinforce this with gossip. I am suspicious of the idea the amount of gossip has really gone down all that much, but maybe there really is a higher sense of isolation causing it to happen.

Obviously they still have an influence on you if you think being locked up is one of the worse things that could happen to you.

I don’t see how it cannot be one of the worst things to experience when several of those neighbors and friends have visible scars from being shanked and viciously assaulted to the point of almost dying if timely medical attention had not been rendered.  I don’t know where you grew up….but I’m betting you have no idea what NYC jails/prisons are like. 

So as a bonding activity, gossip can bring together many more individuals because it doesn’t need a minimum of time to complete, nor is it limited to two individuals at a time, as is grooming.

Ironic considering another reason why I try to avoid gossipers due to their negative tendencies is the fact all the ones I’ve met will try to talk your ear off even when you clearly express your lack of interest or the fact you’re too busy to chat at that moment.  IME, gossiping can be as time-consuming* as the gossiper desires…often to the detriment of productivity in a given professional environment and widespread demoralization/stress for those who are unfortunate to be within earshot or worse….targets of that particular gossip. 

* I recently had to yell at someone to stop gossiping about our mutual friends and about his “issues” with his ex-girlfriend because he was not only trash talking a lot of people without acknowledging his own substantial role in his problems with them…..but also his obliviousness at how ranting about them for 4-5 straight hours is annoying and emotionally draining for anyone unfortunate enough to be within earshot of his bile.  :p

I don’t see how it cannot be one of the worst things to experience when several of those neighbors and friends have visible scars from being shanked and viciously assaulted to the point of almost dying if timely medical attention had not been rendered.  I don’t know where you grew up….but I’m betting you have no idea what NYC jails/prisons are like.

Small sample size, not controlled, and it would seem that it’s not so healthy to work in one either:

MYFOXNY.COM - 16 New York City correction officers were injured while quelling fights involving inmates awaiting pretrial hearings at a Rikers Island jail.

New York City Correction Department spokesman Steven Morello says two separate fights involving six inmates broke out at the Otis Bantum Correction Center at about 6:30 p.m. Tuesday.

And, in Pelican Bay,  a prisoner can be put in solitary confinement for a long time:

Controversies
[edit] Pelican Bay SHU

As of 2007, prisoners in the Pelican Bay SHU spent an average of just over two years in solitary confinement, before being released back into the general prison population, or onto parole. Prisoners have spent as long as eighteen years in the Pelican Bay SHU before being released back into the general prison population, or onto parole. While some prisoners have spent decades in the Pelican Bay SHU, most prisoners are eventually released. On average, sixteen prisoners per month are released directly from the Pelican Bay SHU onto parole in California. [3]

Psychological Impact

Prisoners, lawyers, and Prisoner advocates have argued that SHU confinement is cruel and unusual punishment, due to the severe conditions prisoners are forced to live in. Psychiatrists and psychologists have documented something they call “SHU syndrome,” which affects prisoners who spend more than a few months in isolation. The symptoms resemble those of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, including hallucinations, depression, anxiety, anger and suicide. [4]

Social isolation can be as harmful as a physical attack, and much more harmful in the long run if said physical attack doesn’t cripple or kill one.

Ironic considering another reason why I try to avoid gossipers due to their negative tendencies is the fact all the ones I’ve met will try to talk your ear off even when you clearly express your lack of interest or the fact you’re too busy to chat at that moment.  IME, gossiping can be as time-consuming* as the gossiper desires

What is told in the ear of a man is often heard 100 miles away.  ~Chinese Proverb

The Puritan’s idea of hell is a place where everybody has to mind his own business.  ~Wendell Phillips, attributed

Show me someone who never gossips, and I’ll show you someone who isn’t interested in people.  ~Barbara Walters

Men have always detested women’s gossip because they suspect the truth:  Their measurements are being taken and compared.  ~Erica Jong

You should like the next one:

If an American was condemned to confine his activity to his own affairs, he would be robbed of one half of his existence.  ~Alexis de Tocqueville, 1835

http://www.quotegarden.com/gossip.html

You seem to think gossip can only be spread with the kind of people you describe.

Gossiping can be as little as relaying facts in a few sentences and doesn’t need the services of a gossiper as you describe him/her, per se, for information to be relayed effectively.

Also, for gossip to evolve, it would have to do so at first without any gossiper, as the occupation would have to be in place before anyone could ‘specialize’ in it.  It would evolve in a hunting-gathering culture, and there wouldn’t be that much to talk about, compared to the complexities of life in the beginning of the 21st Century.

Or do you think that when gossip started, gossipers as you describe them suddenly became fully functional, much like the legend of Athena springing out of the forehead of Zeus?

..but also his obliviousness at how ranting about them for 4-5 straight hours is annoying and emotionally draining for anyone unfortunate enough to be within earshot of his bile. 

It would seem that you have trouble asserting boundary issues, and you’re generalizing from the Chinese culture to the American culture.

A gossiper will only benefit when you provide an audience, exholt.

<i>Also, for gossip to evolve, it would have to do so at first without any gossiper, as the occupation would have to be in place before anyone could ‘specialize’ in it.  It would evolve in a hunting-gathering culture, and there wouldn’t be that much to talk about, compared to the complexities of life in the beginning of the 21st Century.,/i>

OFFS.

Serioyusly meant this time.

PiaToR: I feel you.  My family talks for hours about things like relatives’ health, who got a good job, and what the weather was like.  It’s almost as though there are some timeless themes that have nothing to do with the past 150 years that dominate people’s sense of what’s important.

PiatoR, kindly encode your objections to my posts here in Standard English, or please piss off, as you haven’t done much in the way of presenting logic or facts and evidence in opposition to the hypothesis(and, yes, folks, it’s a hypothesis that cannot be tested unless someone can get hold of a TARDIS first) I presented here.

Anyhoo, here’s the book about that hypothesis, from the B&N site:

Why is it that among all the primates, only humans have language? According to Professor Robin Dunbar’s new book, Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language, humans gossip because we don’t groom each other. Dunbar builds his argument in a lively discussion that touches on such varied topics as the behavior of gelada baboons, Darwin’s theory of evolution, computer-generated poetry, and the significance of brain size. He begins with the social organization of the great apes. These animals live in small groups and maintain social cohesion through almost constant grooming activities. Grooming is a way to forge alliances, establish hierarchy, offer comfort, or make apology. Once a population expands beyond a certain number, however, it becomes impossible for each member to maintain constant physical contact with every other member of the group. Considering the large groups in which human beings have found it necessary to live, Dunbar posits that we developed language as a substitute for physical intimacy.

http://www.ebook3000.com/politics/Grooming—Gossip—and-the-Evolution-of-Language_106957.html

I also found this interesting, the conclusion is on page 69.

http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr;=&id=p3gUN-oD2n0C&oi=fnd&pg=PA47&dq=Gossip+in+role+social+networks&ots=NdBWcCMaE6&sig=nNa4Hu8I4qNffepRee8H1iq7yrI#v=onepage&q=Gossip in role social networks&f=false

But, please, oh great Kiwi Librarian, share us your wisdom to prove that what I just posted is a pile of Kakapo crap.

Mighty P - I hope that story about reality tv isn’t true.  Ugh.

PiatoR, kindly encode your objections to my posts here in Standard English, or please piss off,

Fine.  You.  Are.  An.  Idiot..

Do you want to know the places where gossip is most rampant?  It is precisely those places where the external environment is constricted, and success depends most importantly on navigation of social networks within a constricted group.

The epitome of this is… the Turkish harem. You might also include a medieval Royal court.  According to your theory above, there’d be no gossip there.

Which also pretty much describes hominid evolution.  Once we started becoming the toughest bastards on the savannah, how successful an individual might become moved away from challenges like “LIIION!!!” to challenges like knowing whether A was still angry with B over C preferring her to D, who was A’s sister.

Let me stress here, the above head-palming was oveer the idiocy of claiming

”[...] there wouldn’t be that much to talk about, compared to the complexities of life in the beginning of the 21st Century.

Or look at this blog - we do a lot of talking, but very little gossip - mainly because on the Internet you are always dealing with a torrent of new information.

If I tried to engage you in a conversation about whether exholt thought Amanda was hotter than Mighty Ponygirl, or just acting like it to get MP interested… Oh, jesus, even I can’t read that without getting bored shitless.

OT, but maybe not, kinda.

Check out this latest example of conservative humour...

I-  uh-  I mean, what is there to say?  It’s like watching angry snakes attempting to tapdance someone to death.

Dark Avenger Guardian Chow Mein @68: I wouldn’t like it if men gossiped about how tight my vagina is, whether my clitoris is sufficiently small and dainty, whether my breasts sag when I take my bra off/are big enough, or the peachiness or lack thereof of my butt, so why should I think it’s acceptable for women to gossip about men’s penis sizes?  That is one of the reasons I don’t get involved in gossip, because I don’t think it’s ok to make comments about someone’s body like that.

And puritans are horrible people and I don’t see why I should be warmed to gossip by the thought of them using gossip as a means to rigidly control people’s sex lives, which is what they do (the social control of people’s sex lives, I don’t know whether puritans are known for gossiping or not).

I recently had to yell at someone to stop gossiping about our mutual friends and about his “issues” with his ex-girlfriend because he was not only trash talking a lot of people without acknowledging his own substantial role in his problems with them…..but also his obliviousness at how ranting about them for 4-5 straight hours is annoying and emotionally draining for anyone unfortunate enough to be within earshot of his bile.

You do realize this is gossip? We now know you have a friend with an ex-girlfriend who he bitches about but oh my god, he’s just as much of the problem as she is and really the guy is such a bore when he gets like this but what do you do?

Judgmental, moralizing critique of an acquaintance that includes personal information about their life and relationships = gossip.

I’m surprised to see this inclusion of sympathy with gossip.

I’d venture to guess it’s because many of us here, as in the rest of the world, kind of enjoy hearing about gossip. It’s really something people tend to enjoy hearing about and participate in. Gossip can even be considered a form of social currency.

PiatoR, I stand corrected, there were just as many things to talk about 15,000BC as there are today, how could I have overlooked your overwhelming evidence for that point?

According to your theory above, there’d be no gossip there.

Really, the theory that the book talks about means that there would be no gossip in a Turkish or Chinese Harem?

Please tell me that you’re not a reference librarian, if you were and I discussed the physics of combustion, you’d no doubt tell me that I favored the phlogiston theory because I mentioned it in passing.

Or do you think our ancestors spoke and talked like these folks here?

That is one of the reasons I don’t get involved in gossip, because I don’t think it’s ok to make comments about someone’s body like that.

You do realize that an explanation of a phenomenon isn’t the same as approving of said phenomenon, right?

If you could find where I have written approvingly of the activities you describe, you might have a point…...........

Judgmental, moralizing critique of an acquaintance that includes personal information about their life and relationships = gossip.

Looks like all that advice from older relatives, friends, etc, didn’t make that much of an impression on exholt as she would have us believe.

* I recently had to yell at someone to stop gossiping about our mutual friends and about his “issues” with his ex-girlfriend because he was not only trash talking a lot of people without acknowledging his own substantial role in his problems with them…..but also his obliviousness at how ranting about them for 4-5 straight hours is annoying and emotionally draining for anyone unfortunate enough to be within earshot of his bile.  :p

Compare your experiences of being told how gossip was a tool of throwing people in jail in totalitarian governments and a friend cornering you for 5 hours about something going on with those talking about ducking into a closet during a party to talk about who is sleeping with/broke up with whom. Then ask yourself which is a scenario that occurs more often and sounds like something that is more common when discussing personal experiences with gossip.

BTW, RFH, I think the point of Jong’s aphorism is to discourage men from engaging in the activity she describes, or at least get them to think about what they do when they objectify women in the first place.

To paraphrase what the Pope said to Claire Booth Luce, “RFH, Erica Jong is a feminist.”

You do realize this is gossip? We now know you have a friend with an ex-girlfriend who he bitches about but oh my god, he’s just as much of the problem as she is and really the guy is such a bore when he gets like this but what do you do?

Judgmental, moralizing critique of an acquaintance that includes personal information about their life and relationships = gossip.

He’s not a friend of mine.  Also, from the way I hear the term “gossip” used…it is not only judgmental, moralizing critiques, but there’s also open identification by name and other specific ID information.  What I did above would not be considered “gossip” because there is none of the latter so you wouldn’t know specifically who and in what situations I am referring to.

It would seem that you have trouble asserting boundary issues, and you’re generalizing from the Chinese culture to the American culture.

A gossiper will only benefit when you provide an audience, exholt.

Nice bit of victim blaming there….especially when I and other passengers did everything to get him to stop including openly and constantly telling him to STFU from the very first 15 minutes.  Nope…he just kept on going.  Also, it is kind of hard to leave the situation when you’re confined to a small vehicle on a long road trip with a mixture of friends and first-time acquaintances.

exholt, I truly sympathize with your situation having a loudmouthed judgmental unpleasant gossiper with you in a car for hours.

That doesn’t mean all gossip is like this.

Maybe we should call it “networking” or, I dunno, talking.

Also, from the way I hear the term “gossip” used…it is not only judgmental, moralizing critiques, but there’s also open identification by name and other specific ID information.  What I did above would not be considered “gossip” because there is none of the latter so you wouldn’t know specifically who and in what situations I am referring to.

If you ran into someone you hadn’t seen for years, would you answer questions about “what happened to Mary Lou?” with “well, I heard *someone* got married, got religion, and had kids”?  No, you’d give specific information. 

Do you only talk about others without judgment or moral referent?

I think gossip is one of the equalizers that minorities and the downtrodden can use against the people “over” them.  Not only does it allow them to avoid some perilous situations (rapists, hitters, mean people in general) but it gives them a bonding experience and a place to share and hear that the “superior” people aren’t so superior after all.  It’s one of the reasons the powerful hate gossip and gossip by women is reviled as “idle talk” (note how the Wikipedia article uses that phrase more than once).  Often enough, it’s talk by people who can’t make policy pronouncements themselves.

Sure, that can go overboard.  Believing that all rich and famous people are horrible whiny jerks is one of those narratives that celebrity gossip loves despite the fact that it’s not true.  And obviously when a privileged person gossips about a non-privileged person, it can be super cruel and even dangerous for the minority person.

Also, from the way I hear the term “gossip” used…it is not only judgmental, moralizing critiques, but there’s also open identification by name and other specific ID information.  What I did above would not be considered “gossip” because there is none of the latter so you wouldn’t know specifically who and in what situations I am referring to.

So, exholt, gossip only counts when it refers to specific people?

Why did you have to include the details in the first place to make your point?

Nice bit of victim blaming there….especially when I and other passengers did everything to get him to stop including openly and constantly telling him to STFU from the very first 15 minutes.

Nice passive-aggressive move, exholt, there’s nothing about you being in a confined space in your original description of the event.

Also, it is kind of hard to leave the situation when you’re confined to a small vehicle on a long road trip with a mixture of friends and first-time acquaintances.

I’ve been in similar situations twice in my life.  Both times I resolved never to place myself under the goodwill of the offending parties ever again, and I have yet to regret that decision.

I would’ve gotten out at the nearest city with a rental car agency, and gone on by myself.

What’s the worse thing that would’ve happened if you did that?

But I can understand how that would go against the Chinese grain of ‘go along to get along’ and how you might’ve lost face if you had done as I’ve suggested.

This American Life did a show on Gossip last week. 

It included a segment about a woman talking about having worked as a producer for a reality show.  The manipulation of both people and video/audio is pretty intense.

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/444/gossip

If this were a blog post about what kind of wine goes well with dinner, exholt would chime in to mention that she associates wine with something accumulated and enjoyed by Chinese Communist Party officials while everyone in the rest of the country suffered and learn to live modestly, that cheap wine was consumed by her middle school bullying classmates who ended up in Rikers, and that alcohol like beer was typically drunk in large quantities by upper middle class students at Ivy League schools she knew which later caused them to drop out.

And PiaToR would drop in to say, “Well, I don’t know about wine with dinner, but I sure like to WHINE with dinner, amirite?”

To be fair, Dark Avenger would launch into an anecdote featuring two people of unclear relation referred to only as “Accountant Avenger” and “Human Resources Manager Avenger.”

Do you only talk about others without judgment or moral referent?

If it is negative judgment, unless it is someone whose actions harmed me, family, or close friends directly and/or they are public figures whose actions are harming others*....I usually try one of two things:

1. Direct them to ask the persons who were harmed/person in question directly so they can get it “from the horse’s(s’) mouth”.

2. Try changing the subject/walking….especially if it is at a party or event where one is supposed to have a good time. 

As I’ve said before, I never heard the term “gossip” used in the context of empathy, sympathy, or giving positive comments about a given person. 

* Criticizing politicians or other public figures who do harmful things to others/society is a critical check in trying to hold them accountable for their actions. 

I would’ve gotten out at the nearest city with a rental car agency, and gone on by myself.

What’s the worse thing that would’ve happened if you did that?

But I can understand how that would go against the Chinese grain of ‘go along to get along’ and how you might’ve lost face if you had done as I’ve suggested.

I would be stranded as I didn’t have a valid drivers license at that time. 

If it was my car, I’d have kicked him out in the first 15 minutes…but it wasn’t and it was the driver/car owner was the one who didn’t want to “rock the boat” out of a sense of excessive civility.  Made no sense to me as he was trash talking and making up BS about some my and other passengers’ closest friends.

  Also, from the way I hear the term “gossip” used…it is not only judgmental, moralizing critiques, but there’s also open identification by name and other specific ID information.  What I did above would not be considered “gossip” because there is none of the latter so you wouldn’t know specifically who and in what situations I am referring to.

I’d point out that gossip columns are often anonymous about their targets and the info you did dump is plenty enough for someone in a small social group to know who you’re talking about, but I guess it’s not gossip unless it has that True Scotsman burr.

“Tyro” is someone’s satire of an American bourgeois, right?

Really, the theory that the book talks about means that there would be no gossip in a Turkish or Chinese Harem?

No, just that you were citing the book to support one statement when I was objecting to another.

And PiaToR would drop in to say, “Well, I don’t know about wine with dinner, but I sure like to WHINE with dinner, amirite?”

Oh, please.  I’d at least try to work something up from “shiraz” at the very least.

<i.If this were a blog post about what kind of wine goes well with dinner, exholt would chime in to mention that she associates wine with something accumulated and enjoyed by Chinese Communist Party officials while everyone in the rest of the country suffered and learn to live modestly, that cheap wine was consumed by her middle school bullying classmates who ended up in Rikers, and that alcohol like beer was typically drunk in large quantities by upper middle class students at Ivy League schools she knew which later caused them to drop out.

And PiaToR would drop in to say, “Well, I don’t know about wine with dinner, but I sure like to WHINE with dinner, amirite?”

To be fair, Dark Avenger would launch into an anecdote featuring two people of unclear relation referred to only as “Accountant Avenger” and “Human Resources Manager Avenger.”</i>

Oh, I saw what you did there.  very funny.

I would be stranded as I didn’t have a valid drivers license at that time.

So, there are no bus services, no trains, so you were in a sticky whicket.

If it was my car, I’d have kicked him out in the first 15 minutes…but it wasn’t and it was the driver/car owner was the one who didn’t want to “rock the boat” out of a sense of excessive civility.

Saving face, in other words.

“Accountant Avenger” and “Human Resources Manager Avenger

Tyro, I’ve never been a HRM, but I have worked as a janitor, so I do recognize shit when I see it.

It might not be—this was a “friend of a friend” story. And now you’re hearing it as “someone on the internet had a friend who had a friend…” So, grain of salt there. :D

I’m still pretty sure the contract she signed didn’t explicitly state that they the right to imprison her and emotionally and physically abuse her.

I signed a contract that required a 43 hour workweek. I am expected to be at my desk at certain times. I am expected to behave a certain way, and I signed a NDA and non-compete clause.

The contract she signed was probably not dissimilar. It was probably stating that She Had To Stay On the Set In the Mansion Until She Won or Was Elimiated (ie, no walking off the show mid-game), and that she could not divulge the details of what happened in the mansion to third-party media outlets (no giving away trade secrets). Both of those things are totally reasonable non-red-flag type statements and are comparable to me Not Leaving My Desk At 2pm Every Afternoon and Not Going To The Competition With A List Of Our Clients, Contacts, and a copy of our Templates.  Now, maybe I should have been more savvy when I signed the contract and realized that I was going to be IMPRISONED at my desk from 8-5, and that by signing an NDA and Non-Compete, I was signing away *my very right to free speech,* but that would be crazy. Most people don’t approach contract negotiations that way, especially when they are being given something they want (an experience, fame, money) in return.

I have not read the Bachelor contract, but I suspect there is nothing in it about “we get to deny you food and wreck your liver” and “we’re going to emotionally abuse you until we get the reaction we want out of you” but those things are implicit in other seemingly-harmless clauses about staying in the game and not blabbing about your experiences to other people.

If I tried to engage you in a conversation about whether exholt thought Amanda was hotter than Mighty Ponygirl, or just acting like it to get MP interested… Oh, jesus, even I can’t read that without getting bored shitless.

Oh, and Amanda is totally hotter than me. For one thing, she gives a shit about her appearance, which makes a big difference. :D

I can kinda see where exholt is coming from.  I am an incorrigible gossip myself.  The habit really kicked in in grad school, where gossip was a fantastic way to keep loose tabs on an ever-replenishing supply of new foreign students, particularly for their first year.  Gossip, and hosting endless parties to facilitate the gossip, helped us identify and solve problems before informal became formal.  Apartments, cars, minor legal problems, taxes, visas, insurance - having a constant running dialogue was more often helpful than harmful, although it certainly wasn’t perfect. 

However, one group preferred to deal with their own problems, and that was people over 35 from former Soviet states.  Doesn’t take a genius to figure out why, and I largely left them alone.  But other people came from countries where rule breaking - say, on the level of not insuring your car, or drunk driving - maybe wasn’t a big deal, and minor legal problems could be solved with affordable bribes.  In those cases, gossip served as a useful cautionary tale.  It’s one thing to have been informed that drunk driving is illegal and a conviction can keep you from renewing your visa, it’s another to hear that drunk driving cost that guy you just met over $2,000 and his boss found out when he couldn’t get a visa to attend a conference because it’s a felony conviction and for reals, some countries actually care about that shit.

Gossip, and hosting endless parties to facilitate the gossip, helped us identify and solve problems before informal became formal.  Apartments, cars, minor legal problems, taxes, visas, insurance - having a constant running dialogue was more often helpful than harmful, although it certainly wasn’t perfect.

Out of curiosity, couldn’t the cautionary tales be told without having to identify the specific person and/or omitting details which may identify the specific person being discussed?

Moreover, wouldn’t discussions where everyone knew everyone’s business to the detail you described potentially jeopardize a grad student’s status in the department because of competitive classmates and/or departmental politics? Am wondering as I’ve heard many horror stories of grad students experiencing toxic environments because of a nasty combination of gossip, competitive jockeying among grad students, and academic department politics.

Out of curiosity, couldn’t the cautionary tales be told without having to identify the specific person and/or omitting details which may identify the specific person being discussed?

As in your case, when you supplied details that wouldn’t make a difference to your story of being trapped in a car with a self-centered gossip?

Amanda, I once read a piece where some scientists had worked out that, in a band of higher primates(think chimps, our ancestors, etc) there was an upper limit on the number of members of a single band if it was based on grooming for social cohesion, I think about 150 or so members.

That’s about the number that an average member can handle regarding the social relationships amongst other members of the group, that is to say knowing who liked who, who hated who, who would follow who, and so on. This becomes important because in such groups who gets to be top dogs are often more due to political maneuvering than to purely objective criteria like who is the strongest/fastest/biggest/loudest.

Indeed

This has been a pet theory of mine for a while too. But I don’t have the writing chops or the inclination to explain it so well.