Why do people gossip?
Why do people gossip? I never really came up with an answer to that but I’ve been thinking about this lately. I think gossiping is a way to make people feel better about themselves. This generally occurs when as an individual, you yourself are feeling inadequate about something. Transfer this feeling into a cultural setting and it can turn into something enormous – gossiping to make yourself feel better in the eyes of the community.
I’ve come up with a list of reasons why people gossip. Here’s what I have so far:
- Gossiping makes you feel better;
- Gossiping about other people takes attention away from what is wrong with your own life;
- Gossiping helps people bond (temporarily);
- Gossiping makes you feel powerful;
- Gossiping turns a boring conversation into something interesting which gives you attention for the time being;
- Gossiping makes you feel better about decisions you’ve made and are trying to justify them to yourself;
- Gossiping about others gives you a sense of superiority….
That’s what I’ve come up with so far, but I think we can actually add to that list.
Brown Aunties and Gossip
Now this brings me to a topic which I am sure has affected a lot of people. Brown aunties gossiping. Why the heck do these aunties do it? Don’t they have something better to do with their time? Well, the answer to that is simply “no, they don’t”.
A lot of the time brown aunties will talk about other people’s kids by making defamatory comments etc. The only thing they are doing is trying to make themselves feel better about their own children’s “deviant” behaviour. (That’s a whole other topic in itself). Gossiping gives them a sense of security in trying to protect their own “reputations”. I bet lots of you have encountered this. It can start with these mean aunties talking about people and saying things like, “I saw their kid at the mall and he/she was sitting in the food court with a bunch of kids”. Then they go further and state, “I would never let my kid do that.” So the gossiping goes on. This is a relatively simple example, which lots of brown kids have encountered.
So if we take the list above and try to put it in this context, we can see why these aunties may pull crap like this (and worse). The whole idea of making yourself feel better by putting down someone else comes into play here. Especially from a cultural perspective, “respect” is something that is held in high esteem. By gossiping, a lot of people think they are maintaining some sort of warped sense of respect by putting down others to confirm to themselves that they are better somehow.
I have more thoughts on this topic, and I’ll write more eventually, but that’s it on gossiping for now.
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That’s a good point. I’ve found that people in our desi culture do not accept themselves as they are. There is always the feeling that they’re not good enough.
At least for that moment.
Thus, resorting to gossiping.
This is a much deeper problem than it appears in our culture. It starts from a very young age. “What’re they going to say?”, “What are people going to say?” is imbedded into kids’ minds even before they can walk around.
That leads to lack of self-respect, lack of self-love and so gossiping is one way to make oneself feel better.
And it works though!
Although gossiping works for its purpose, it unleashes a lot very negative implications. The main issue is that people from adults to kids alike can never get along and be there real self without thinking about what they might say to their parents or what they might think of them self and spread out to others. You end up being a fake person to everyone but your immediate family.