The horror of a world without gossip

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Gossip, like many other activities, has been stifled by lockdown. It relies on the world going about its business. Its juices are stimulated by social collisions, misadventures and infractions. When so few of us are doing anything much there is less scope for bad behaviour and less to report on.

2. I love gossip. Is that wrong? I have to ask, because for an activity that does so much to colour people’s reputations, gossip does not itself have a good name. We learn at an early age that it’s not nice to talk behind someone’s back. Not that it stops us: a 2019 meta-analysis published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science found that subjects spent, on average, 52 minutes a day chatting about people who were not present (my guess

1. to stifle étouffer; ici, réprimer / lockdown confinement / to rely on reposer sur, dépendre de / to go, went, gone about (one's) business vaquer à ses occupations; ici, ...la bonne marche du monde / scope possibilités, opportunités / behaviour comportement, attitude.

2. on average en moyenne, en général / to chat parler, discuter / my guess is à mon avis.

is that they were the most interesting minutes of the day).

GOSSIP IS SUBVERSIVE FUN 3. Gossip seems to be a universal characteristic of our species: scholars have studied its spread among business executives, cattle ranchers and sports teams; among Native Americans, Dutch students and Polynesian atoll-dwellers. Robin Dunbar, an evolutionary psychologist, even proposed that early humans developed speech in order to gossip, as a means of group bonding. A grand claim, perhaps, but it’s clear that gossip helps us to orient ourselves within our group: who is up and down, who is in or out.

4. It also draws us together. The word “gossip” itself is rooted in friendship. It derives from the

3. species (inv.) espèce(s) / scholar expert / spread ici, généralisation / executive cadre (dirigeant) / cattle rancher éleveur de bétail / Dutch Hollandais / dweller habitant / speech ici, langage / means (inv.) moyen(s) / to bond créer des liens / claim affirmation; ici, théorie.

4. to draw, drew, drawn together rapprocher / to be rooted in émaner de, être fondé sur (root racine) / to derive from venir, découler de /

Old English word godsibb, which meant godparent – that is, a friend of the family. When we gossip, we engage in a delicious mutual transgression. By sharing secret information with me you’re indicating that you know I’m not the sort of person who will rebuff or report you for it, and vice versa. The moment I sense a new acquaintance is willing to cross that threshold is often the moment we become friends.

5. People who nobly refrain from gossip seem to lack some essential fellow feeling. Theresa

godparent parrain/marraine / to share partager / to rebuff rabrouer, rejeter / to report ici, dénoncer / acquaintance connaissance, relation / to be willing to être prêt à / threshold limite, cap. 5. to refrain from s'abstenir de / to lack manquer, être dépourvu de / fellow ici, de camaraderie /

Britain’s former prime minister, remarked with quiet pride that she was not the sort of person to “gossip over lunch”. Anyone who had lunch with her confirmed this; they also confirmed that it was painfully dull. Gossip is fun – subversive fun. The philosopher Gloria Origgi has suggested that a disdain for gossip conceals a drive for authoritarian control and an excessive regard for formal rules. Gossip is a way of disseminating an unofficial version of reality, closer to samizdat than propaganda. It is freedom of speech at play.

6. Authority has a chilling effect on gossip. In any hierarchy, people at the top like to control the flow of information down below. Gossip is a way for workers to take back a measure of control, to speak truth behind the backs of power. After all, management has secrets it does not want you to know. If employees want this information they cannot make a request to HR or read it in the chief executive’s weekly email. They must rely on each other.

A FORM OF "CULTURAL LEARNING" 7. Gossip can give a voice to the voiceless. It is hardly coincidental that the groups most often associated with gossip throughout history have been women and servants. Origgi describes gossip as a weapon used by the powerless against the powerful: “You might not be able to change the institutional status of a person,” she says, “but by gossiping, you can downgrade that person’s reputation.”

8. According to the psychologist Roy Baumeister, gossip is a form of “cultural learning”. It helps to ensure that everyone is playing by the same social rulebook, or at least has a copy of it. Children, who have an awful lot to figure out about how to behave, gossip with and about each other – to get the kids’ view of the world, not the official version handed down by parents and teachers. The more rules we have to learn and the faster we need to learn them, the more we lean on gossip. Teenagers love to gossip because they are in effect cramming for a PhD in the rules of relationships.

9. If gossip is more often negative than positive, that’s not necessarily because people are malicious. It’s because the quickest way to learn about a norm is to hear how someone breached it. That way, we discover what not to do, without having to make the mistake ourselves. Baumeister points to the way parents use stories about people – in essence a form of gossip – to teach children about the world’s dangers. A parent can’t show a child why they shouldn’t run into the road, and merely explaining why it’s not a good idea is not nearly so vivid as telling a story about a little girl who did it once and was never seen again.

10. We may, sadly, be witnessing the extinction of gossip. The pandemic has accelerated longMay,

to lean, leaned or leant on se fier à / to cram for réviser, bûcher / PhD = Doctor of Philosophy doctorat.

9. malicious malveillant / to breach enfreindre / mistake erreur / to point to mentionner / merely simplement / vivid ici, efficace.

10. to witness être témoin de, assister à / term trends, bringing forward what was already on the rise, like homeworking, and killing off what was on the way out. Dunbar, writing in the early days of the internet, argued that electronic communication could only ever form a poor substitute for face-to-face gossip. I had already noticed, long before this crisis struck, that people – including me, eventually – were less ready to gossip over email or in private messages. All writing is publishing now. Speech evaporates the moment it leaves our mouths but anything committed to text has an afterlife its originator cannot control.

11. Whether we realise it or not, I think we will all be worse off if gossip disappears. A society stripped of gossip will be short on playfulness, intimacy and fellowship. It will be a little less equitable and a lot more dull. You didn’t hear it from me, ok? O

trend tendance / to bring, brought, brought forward accélérer / to be on the rise prendre de l'ampleur / to argue affirmer, soutenir / poor piètre / to notice constater, remarquer / to strike, struck, struck frapper / eventually en fin de compte / to commit to text consigner, mettre par écrit / afterlife deuxième vie. 11. worse off bien pire / to be stripped of être dépourvu de, sans / to be short on manquer de / playfulness gaieté, espièglerie / intimacy ici, convivialité / fellowship camaraderie.

We spend on average 52 minutes per day talking about people who are not present.