I love me some good gossip. Or as Gen X calls it, "spilling the tea."
Which is a stupid phrase because I got that tea just right. Right temperature, right amount of honey, and now you want me to spill it? No, thank you. Go spill your own tea.
Except, according to some mental health advocates, gossip may actually be good for you.
"This weekend was so great. I watched some trashy rom-coms, and then my best friend told me she spotted a strange car parked in her neighbor’s driveway even though everyone knew her husband was out of town."
Normally, gossip is regarded as a sin, according to Paul’s letter to the Romans (thanks a lot, Romans!), but it can actually be positive, says an article on Vice.com.
Irony, thou art a fickle mistress.
Suzanne Koch Eckenrode, a licensed marriage and family therapist for more than 25 years, said that "gossip crosses that line when it is no longer about trying to understand what happened with a particular situation and instead is now about manipulating others into viewing you positively."
In other words, if you’re trying to make yourself look good at someone else’s expense, that’s gossip. But if you’re only trying to understand all the different reasons some strange vehicle parked in your neighbor’s driveway while her husband was out of town, well, that’s just self-help.
So, just talk about them behind their back instead.
But, says the Vice article, even if you’re opposed to gossip, you can still vent about a conflict you’re dealing with. Like, if your neighbor keeps mowing on your side of the property line, then it sounds like that strange car is fair game, and you should see if your other neighbors have noticed the same thing about the mowing.
I’ve known plenty of gossips in my life, especially when my wife and I first got married. My wife’s family knew plenty of people at their church who made a sport out of digging up dirt on other people. Then they would cross-reference what they knew with their own family because "they were concerned" about the subject of their investigations.
Of course, they shared every detail they had learned in order to build a complete picture, speculating about who was doing what, and then sharing that information with as many of their friends as they could.
You know, out of concern.
It’s a wonder anyone in that church had any problems to begin with, given the number of people who were "concerned" with everything happening in their lives. If American intelligence agencies pursued foreign targets with this much efficiency, we’d be the envy of every spy agency in the world.
According to Suzanne Eckenrode, "gossip crosses that line when it is no longer about trying to understand what happened with a particular situation and instead is now about manipulating others into viewing you positively."
So, you’re saying that as long as I don’t mention how I’m a better person because I’ve never had a strange car parked in my driveway, I can talk about that all I want?
Eckenrode also says intention is everything. That is, what is your reason for gossiping? Do you even mean to do it? Or are you just sharing vital information for other people’s benefit?
So, if I don’t mean to gossip, then it’s perfectly alright. Just like I didn’t mean to eat the last piece of cake for breakfast, so I don’t know why my family is so upset with me.
It also turns out that spilling the tea on a person is good for your relationships, especially your inner circle.
According to a 2024 study from the University of Maryland’s Department of Computer Science and Institute for Systems Research, "when people are interested in knowing if someone is a good person to interact with, if they can get information from gossiping, that can be a very useful thing to have."
That’s absolutely correct. Because if there’s anyone who’s an expert at human interactions, it’s computer scientists
But spill this tea wisely, says Eckenrode. "Gossip is an acceptable form of communication for providing social information, but social ammunition has no place in this world," she said in Vice.com. "If the gossip provides insight into another person’s behavior without changing them into a social target, then it will likely provide an opportunity for better understanding among individuals involved."
Except I heard she steals people’s lunches at work, though.
Photo credit: Stefu (Pixabay, Creative Commons)
My new humor novel, Mackinac Island Nation, is finished and available from 4 Horsemen Publications. You can get the ebook and print versions here.