Gossip. Why Do We Need Them?

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

All of us in our life have more than once organized our communication with another person through gossip, that is, when we talk about someone else, we discuss him.

This is a pretty interesting way to organize communication. If you look from the point of view, what in this way a person receives in communication, and what, on the contrary, avoids.

But first I would like to say that a long time ago, when information was not yet so easily dispersed around the world, gossip was a very effective way to learn something new and at the same time maintain your safety. People talked about other people to find out if they should be trusted or not. In principle, even now such a task of gossip (although here I would rather call it collecting recommendations and reviews) exists. It is always easier for us to go, for example, to some specialist who was recommended to us.

But I would like to consider now gossip as one of the not very ways to get closer to other people.

It so happens that it is quite difficult for a person to open up to someone himself. From time to time it is difficult for all of us to be in a situation of vulnerability, self-disclosure, when we can and are able to speak openly and honestly about our feelings.

Someone was shamed for this in childhood, someone was simply not taught to build relationships in this way of self-disclosure. Where we just talk about ourselves or a friend and so build communication.

And in this case, when a person does not know how to open up or for some reason wants to talk about himself. One of the ways to get closer to a person is to start gossiping, discussing someone else.

A very interesting scheme turns out. That is, in order to become closer to another person, I choose to talk not about myself, not about you, I choose to talk about some third person.

At the same time, I can tell someone's secrets. I say something secret, but not about myself, but about something else. And in this veil of mystery, secrecy, there is something similar to intimacy. I trust you with secrets, even if they are strangers. Such a safe thing. Get closer through discussing the other.

It may even seduce the one to whom these secrets are being told. After all, he is chosen as someone who can be trusted. And here another task opens up that gossip can perform. It is an attempt to form a coalition with the chosen one to share a secret.

So, if a person, for some reason, has not developed the skill of self-disclosure, just talk about yourself, maybe even about how bad it is with someone else, but at the same time talk about yourself.

Or the person does not know how to be interested in the interlocutor. Maybe he finds it inconvenient to ask another person about something. Or maybe the interlocutor is so interesting that it's even scary to ask a question, in fear of getting rejected.

And then the person can choose to gossip as a way to get closer through the image of the third person in the conversation.

It may be an unconscious way to approach. Only, of course, this is a substitute for intimacy. Because intimacy is just when I reveal myself to you, and you are in front of me without intermediaries.