Gossip

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http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p024tkm1

I heard this show last night on the BBC. And I realized that I have NEVER gossiped. But I had a couple of periods in my life where I lived in small communities, where I had a little prestige, and people did say things to me about some of the other people that was surely gossip.

Soo I'm wondering if any of you all gossip regularly with other people?

my mom is anti-gossip, so i was raised to hate it. that has kept me out of a lot of trouble, but lost me some popularity.

I think everyone gossips. My mom hates it and she is NT but she will talk about other people privately. But yet she doesn't like other people talking to her complaining about another person they don't like so she will tell them if they have ever told the person yet and they say no so she tells them they have no right to complain then if they have never told them yet. She also doesn't like it when she talks to people and they go and blurb to other people what she said.

You do need to be careful when you talk about other people though because it can turn into gossip and that is how rumors start and it can turn into a lawsuit. I once made a joke at work about a co worker being in jail because she had been working at our hotel for four years and then she was gone all of a sudden so I found it suspicious and I found it very strange so I thought something bad happened so I said "Maybe she went to jail" because everyone was being so secretive about it so it made me wonder something terrible happened. Then I was told I was trying to start a rumor and it's slander and I can go to jail for it if I get sued. I was finally told the co worker quit working there because she didn't agree with something. I thought "That was it? Why a big secret then where she went?" I guess this would be considered gossip. I was talking about another person and she wasn't present. But what if someone had over heard me saying she went to jail and assumed that was what happened to her because they didn't hear the whole conversation and they stopped listening to it after hearing she went to jail so they told it to others and bam lot of people in town thinks she was arrested and in jail. Then the co worker finds out people thought she went to jail so she may try and find out how did the rumor start.

How many of us here talk about other people? I see it all the time here. Even when we go to a therapist's office, we talk about other people and how they treat us or how we have a hard time with them, etc. Some people don't consider this gossip such as my mother because it's being done privately and not being shared, it's only told to one person and they don't share it with others what you told them. They also don't go to the person and tell them what you said about them. But of course posting about it on a public forum isn't really private, same as when you do it in public where anyone can overhear because they can still spread it.

When I talk about anyone, I prefer to not use names because you never know if someone will spread it and it prevents drama. I was on a beach talking to a guy and we were talking about parenting and then I bring up about how times have changed and how people think kids are worse in each generation and they think you can't yell at them or spank em so there are brats now and he then started telling me a story about a friend he knows and she was at Safeway with her child bla bla bla and she gave her kid two swats in the butt for throwing a tantrum because she said no to the candy he wanted and the cashier called social services on the mother claiming she saw her beat her kid bla bla bla. Gossip here he did. He just talked about his friend behind her back and she wasn't present. Now I just gossiped too.

actually, kids who are hit (spanked, not abused) are more likely to be angry and anxious and to become delinquent. they are also more likely to grow up to be obese, arthritic, and have cardiovascular disease. this is science.

my view: a parent who hits is a failed parent. hitting a child teaches them that violence is a solution. example is the strongest teacher. i was hit by my mom, once for crying when she was having a bad day (at home) as a five year old, once for being mouthy (no bad words or name-calling, just loudly disagreeing) as a teenager, once in grade school for saying good night after she had told me to shut up. i think less of her for those episodes. mostly she was loving, and i love her, but those lapses were nothing but ugly.

Yep. All kids ever learn from being hit is that it's OK to hurt people to get your own way. Almost all abusive husbands and violent criminals were hit as kids.

If your kid wants something in the shop and you don't want to buy it, you just tell them no. No need to hit them.

The mom did tell him no but the kid threw a tantrum and wouldn't stop so the Mom gave two swats on the behind and stuck him in the cart and the kid stopped. She barely hit him and the cashier called it a beating and she got fired for it. The social worker did drop by and closed the case and understood but she still had to do her job to make sure there was no abuse and the mom was mad but not at the social worker but at the cashier so she went in and complained to the manager and said she wanted her fired so she got fired. This is the story he told me about his friend. I tried imagining how the cashier must have felt and what she thought instead. But I was surprised the social worker would actually tell the mother they got a complaint from the worker at Safeway saying she saw her beat her kid. I thought by law the reporting was kept private and they don't give you any details who did the report and where it happened.

I didn't look at the link. So I have to talk about gossip as I understand it.

In my experience there are very few people who don't gossip. Even the least gossipy people do say something about other people. I myself try to avoid talking about other people at work but my colleagues speak to me about other people and it's really hard to completely avoid it. I try to say something neutral, if I have to. I might state some relevant facts that actually happened but I avoid saying unnecessary insulting remarks that are not objective. I avoid even that, if I can, because even if I say facts, what I have said might get quoted in a twisted way and gossipy people will love to spread the twisted version of what I have said. Gossipy people have the bad habit of twisting and spreading what others say to make it dramatic. You might end up being falsely regarded as a gossipy person.

Very few don't gossip you say so I would assume they never talk about themselves being picked on or bullied or how someone had upset them, bla bla bla or how their boss is bullying them at work or someone. I guess if they ever go see a therapist, they won't really talk about the issues they have with other people or how other people treat them or even mention their ex boyfriend whom broke up with them so they are hurt over it and have a hard time moving on so they are in counseling for it. I wonder how that would work? I guess they don't go at all. But whatever you meant by gossip because it's a subjective word and it means different things to everyone. Some may not consider it gossip what i just described.

^ ???

What?

If you were responding to someone else's post, please just disregard me but I thought you were responding to mine.

I said there are very few people in my experience who don't gossip. That means almost all people talk about other people. And you gave very good examples of such situations (talking about being bullied etc). I didn't say there are very few people who do gossip.

So your post was confusing.

The BBC radio show I linked starts off giving a clear definition of gossip. they say it is talk about someone who isnt there that offers the possibility of making a moral judgement. I guess I think of gossip as intimate sharing opinions about other people's lives and stories that aren't present, and where you are seeking agreement with your viewpoint. Spilling your guts to a psychologist or psychiatrist isn't really gossip imo. The shrinker isn't sharing with you about his friends.

In my case I don't have a circle of friends. I'm not intimate with anyone. No one tells me what they think about other people, or even their own day to day story. I talk about the news, or restaurants, or the weather with the few people I talk to these days.

Like I say, the word is subjective. I was taught as a kid it's saying bad things behind peoples back when they were not there to defend themselves. But yet my husband told me coming home from work and telling him about someone upsetting me at work and what they did isn't gossip because he isn't going to share it with other people. I was told online once telling it to a bunch of people would make it gossip because I didn't tell it to one person only and I was like 'WTF, so if I am deeply upset about something and my OCD is getting out of control again because I can't let it go so I have to talk about it to different people because one person will just get sick of hearing it, I am to bottle it up and keep it all inside me and deal with the thoughts and hurt feelings alone until it all catches up to me from holding it all in for so long.' That is what I had learned. My therapist told me it's okay in his office because it's a safe place and he isn't allowed to share it with anyone by law.

I learned as an adult the word means different things to people so when anyone mentions gossip, I don't even know what they mean by it. As a child my mom said gossip was wrong but then she would turn around calling my dad an as*hole behind his back and saying what a jerk he is or she would be talking about one of our neighbors with me and then tell me it's her opinion and it must not be repeated or the time she and I were discussing my brother's ex girlfriend because she came into our house uninvited and trashed my brother's room as an attempt for him to call her asking her to help clean it up but the plan backfired because he called his new friend instead who is a girl and she came over and helped him. Me and Mom were just discussing that situation only and my mom mentioned she just needs help and she is just hurt. I didn't know my mom's definition of gossip until I was an adult but she didn't tell me that as a child, she only said it was saying bad things behind peoples backs when they were not there to defend themselves.

I have online friends so they will tell me about other people rather it's their neighbors or their friends or family members or partners. Lot of times I am not sure if it's really bad things they are saying or not or just neutral. I am aware not everyone may consider this gossip because I am only one person they are telling it too and it's on IM. But the definition I was taught as a child, this would be gossip. I just say everyone does it rather they want to admit it or not. I'm using my childhood definition of the word.

I think there's a difference between sharing something with a friend about your dealings with someone else because something is bothering you, which is very similar to telling a therapist about someone in your life, and true gossip which is essentially simply talking about other people just for mean-spririted kicks, that may spread untruths and speculation that may border on slander.

Example of true gossip for mean-spirited kicks:
Neighbor 1: "So did you see that woman in number 409 the other day?"
Neighbor 2: "No, what about her?"
"She was chatting to a different man outside her house and then they walked in together!"
"You mean a different one from the guy we saw her with the other week?"
"Yes!"
"Do you think she is cheating on a boyfriend -- or do you think it's worse than that?"
"What do you mean worse?"
"Maybe she's a HOOKER!! !!"
"Oh my god, you never know! I mean, she does dress kinda slu*ty -- did you see those shoes she had on yesterday? Nobody who wears shoes like that is a respectable person...."

Example of talking about other people, which I wouldn't call gossip:
Wife gets home from work: "Crap, I just really am getting closer to wanting to quit."
Husband: "What happened?"
Wife: "It's the situation with my manager, Jane. She is really starting to make unfair demands of me and it's getting personal. I think she is treating me unfairly and it's getting to where I could make a legal complaint."
Husband: "I've said it before, you should take this to Jane's own upper-manager Mike."
Wife: "I would, except lately I'm not so sure he would be sympathetic to my complaints about Jane. "
Husband: "Why not?"
Wife, with embarrassment and difficulty: "......because I saw them kissing in the corridor yesterday. I was only going out to the bathroom and there they were. They didn't see me but I was a bit shocked. And now I realize if they've got something going between them, I now have nobody to whom I could take a legitimate complaint about Jane's treatment of me and her demands on me..."
Husband: "Oh...crap. I see what you mean. Well that kind of makes things difficult -- is there anyone higher still you can go to?"

See, in the first example, the gossip is for no purpose, it's not fact-finding or fact-disclosing for anyone's benefit or for better understanding of a situation. It's just plain nosiness for prurient, self-satisfying entertainment. It's talking about something that's nobody's business and it's also twisting a situation into a complete untruth, fabrication, sensationalist slander, etc.

In the second example, Person 1 is in anguish about a situation and they are sharing it with Person 2, but in order to look closer at the problem, Person 1 had to share a situation she witnessed. She isn't talking about it for entertainment, she's imparting difficult information to offload, vent, share the fact that her own problem has worsened because of what she saw. She and her husband are not gleeful they are just realizing there is a new wrinkle to the problem at work.

So I think the difference is entertainment and lack of true need.

If the talking about the other people has no purpose other than entertaining you, you're gossipping.

If the talking about the other people is because you have to vent something, give information to help someone advise you, etc, it's not gossip.

It seems like a fine line but often it really isn't.

.

Some reasons for talking about other people might be to find out how to deal with them. Unfortunately, many get upset merely about "talking about people".

Yes, I have noticed that since my early teens years and I couldn't understand. Wouldn't they then improve their behavior if they saw it was upsetting someone after realizing how they come off across as or how they make other people feel? But unfortunately it doesn't work like that. My husband says emotions get in the way is why so they get hurt instead and angry and upset than doing the other things I would expect. Even aspies get upset by this too because I have seen it before and seen people mentioning it here. So I learned maybe people respond better if it's said to their face.