Picture this: there I was, enjoying a beer with my friend Hugh when he dropped a bombshell. Hugh was uncomfortable with the amount of gossiping and warned me that I should resist talking about people when they were not in the room. I was confused. What else was I supposed to chat about over a frothy, cold beer: solve the mysteries of the universe? Pfft, please – I’d need more than beer if that was the plan.
I describe it as fizz-wizz for the brain—a juicy, wriggly sort of sensation that shoots from your lips and ears down into your boots. This feeling intensifies when one obtains, often through salacious means, a fresh chunk of gossip, making it feel like someone has shaken up the can of Passiona inside my heart.
To my fellow gossip connoisseurs, I’m here to defend our beloved art form as more than just frivolity; it has improved humans in profound ways, from its roots in evolutionary psychology to its significance in shaping history. Our primal ancestors needed to have goss sessions around the fire to protect themselves. “Big day. Janice got nibbled by a sabre-toothed tiger, and Kerry was thrown into the pit for grunting Dua Lipa too loud”. Done right, having a goss is how humans survive.
After all, women were now getting a wage as secretaries and telephone operators for the honour of listening in on men’s very important, very vital, very impressive conversations about things like golf, mistresses, and tax avoidance. But with this great power bestowed on us gals came an even greater pressure from those above to STFU.This passage from a horrifyingly real 1961 secretarial training manual gives you a clearer idea: “It’s too bad the pastime of gossiping is misused by office girls.