Is It Wrong That I Live for Gossip?

I can still remember the feeling. A crumpled-up note passed across the classroom. A furtive glance to see if the teacher had spotted us. And the ballpoint pen-scrawled secrets curled up inside: So-and-so has a crush on you. Or blah blah fancies blah blah. Whatever it is that teenagers tend to gossip about. And then there was the whole unpacking of it at break. Are you going to ask them out? Should I do it for you? Didn’t you know that so-and-so was going to do it first? The talking about it was always more fun than the thing itself. Life is just a series of present moments—but it’s the build-up, and the unfurling of everything, that makes it glisten.

I don’t gossip like that as an adult. If I kept cornering people in the office and asking them who they liked, I might be reported to HR. But I retain an avid interest in the lives and motivations of others (sorry, Eleanor Roosevelt). It’s why I low-key don’t mind messy, overshare-y personal essays, or why I’ve binged every episode of the BBC’s Couples Therapy, Channel 4’s Blue Therapy, and Esther Perel’s podcast Where Should We Begin? It’s why my favorite feeling is when you’re at a party with the girls and you’re all huddled together and someone gasps nooo in that special tone reserved for mock surprise.

Gossip isn’t exactly considered a worthy pastime, however. We’re not supposed to speak about the business of others—especially when it doesn’t pertain to our own. And I get that. I’m not interested in hashing over something that is genuinely distressing for another person, and I do take secret-keeping seriously (I collect secrets like precious jewels, in fact). But that doesn’t mean I don’t love a bit of chit-chat: the reasons people broke up, why a certain person cheated, who’s been sleeping with who and what the messages were like afterwards. It can be a bonding experience: if someone trusts me enough to share goss, and vice versa, it’s as if something has been sealed. A pact, a shared love of yapping.

Sometimes, I wonder if I was born this way. My partner, by comparison, isn’t massively interested in gossip. It’s not a moralistic thing—she’d just rather play guitar or read sci-fi books. Whenever I try to squeeze out more info from her—like, why did they break up, how long had they been seeing each other?—she’ll often have nothing more to add. She simply won’t have asked. Which leaves me wondering: Am I just a mega-superficial person? Does my fascination with other people’s lives indicate a latent dissatisfaction with my own, or—worse—a sort of blemish on my character? Should I, in the spirit of Erika Jayne, actually be giving up drama for Lent?

I don’t think loving gossip always makes you a bad person. In many ways, I think it’s helped me with my work. When interviewing people in a journalistic capacity, for example, I find myself genuinely interested in their stories—what makes them tick, their actual lives beyond neat soundbites and surface-level stuff. My profound love of gossip also, I think, makes me an attentive listener. I’m more than happy to hear you unpack the drama in your friendship group, or give you advice on what to do when you’re getting mixed signals, and I definitely want to scrutinize the screenshots. I will sit and listen until there’s nothing left to say, and then I’ll go over it again with you the next day.

Which is not to say that gossip is always harmless—many times, it’s not. Consider the ways in which the paparazzi have historically hounded celebrities, lights flashing as soon as they leave the house. It’s our collective obsession with goss that has led tabloids to dig into the lives of stars way more than should have, hacking phones, publishing stories about hidden mental health struggles, and dissecting private relationships. Gossip can be damaging when it crosses people’s boundaries, or strips them of ownership over their own story—sharing information about someone’s sexuality before they’ve come out, for example.

That said, there’s a huge difference between tabloids publicly outing someone, and you and your mates WhatsApping about whoever you spotted making out outside the club. Most of us know instinctively what sort of gossip is damaging, and what sort of gossip is a bit of fun. And, as social creatures, we’re hardwired for connection—gossip is a part of that. Numerous studies have shown that gossip can facilitate closeness, while also maintaining social order. One 2015 study found that people hearing gossip showed more activity in their prefrontal cortex—the part of the brain responsible for navigating complex social behaviors. In other words, we’ve developed this way because it benefits us socially.

As someone who now lives a relatively stable and peaceful life, I rarely find myself at the center of the gossip—though in the past, I’ve had my moments. There was a time, in my early 20s, when I actually relished it. I’d find myself hooking up with people I shouldn’t, or doing things solely for the purpose of shocking myself and others (what the kids call “for the plot”). You’d have to speak to my therapist about why that might have been—maybe I thought it made me more interesting, or maybe I was trying to fill some internal void. Maybe I was just young and now I’m older. It doesn’t really matter. Either way, I liked people talking about me, and now I don’t—or I just don’t give them anything to talk about.

Gossip isn’t everything. The most interesting and engaging conversations often don’t involve any mention of other people. And there is, I have to say, nothing sexier than a person who loves to talk about their interests—not the interests of others. But, saying that, my love of gossip will forever endure. And there’s still no better, more thrilling message to receive than one from your mate that begins with the immortal words: “Omg, you’ll never guess what happened…”