Have I ever disclosed how much I dislike gossiping? I don't think so. Anyway...
So I've never been a fan of gossiping, and I can proudly say that I have never participated in spreading rumors about a person (yes, I'm giving myself a pat on the back for this one). Talking about other people's personal business or embarrassing stories always made me uncomfortable.
However, that doesn't mean I haven't heard a bunch of bullshit about a bunch of people whom I may or may not have known at the time. Because unfortunately, if it's one thing some teenage girls seems to love: it's fresh gossip (although, there's really nothing "fresh" about that kind of gossip). Now, I always made a point of trying to seem totally uninterested, so that they wouldn't tell me, since I genuinly would rather not now.
In the years leading up to high school, spreading rumors was a thing, because of course it was. Girls would gather in groups and talk about (mostly) the other girls in the other groups. And it was never good things. I once sat behind some "friends" and one of them called one of my friends fat, and nobody in that table said anything (I think that was the day when I truly realized that I had 2 friends, and none of them were at that table). I specifically remember one thing that people were saying about a girl in the same year as me. And people almost never told me things (I mean, people wouldn't tell me that class had been cancelled and we could go home earlier so), and I barely had any friends so I'm assuming it reached pretty much everyone. It was pretty bad (and definitely not true), I genuinly hope she never found out what people were saying she did. I felt horrible for her.
Fast forward to high school, I had a friend who loved to gossip. When she heard something, she couldn't wait to tell us about it. No, really, she would come up to us on monday morning and say: "As soon as I heard, I couldn't wait to tell you guys!". And it could be really personal stuff, I remember that she once said "so you know X who is dating Y, well I heard that X had an abortion", and I was like jesus christ, that's not something you go around telling people! And none of us even know this girl! And another time she were talking about a class mate of ours (whom I had a different relation to, since our mothers are co-workers and friends so I knew a few personal things about her, which I of course kept to myself), and how she was "so weird" and "childish" because she did this and that. And that was very shitty, because she's a really nice girl who had been going through some stuff, but my friend did not know that.
And then, my final example: my own grandmother. You have to be really careful with what you tell her, because whatever you say there's a 50/50 chance that the whole village will know about it within a week. And I absolutely HATE that, I can't tell her anything without thinking it through and being extremely clear about what I mean. Because I don't want everyone above the age of 60 to know details about my life the next morning, and I especially don't want all those people to hear something that's actually false. I once jokingly said that "Well, I'm working with my old classmate [whom I had gone to school with since kindergarten] the whole summer after graduation, guess we can't get rid of eachother!", and somehow she spinned it to seem that I didn't like him and didn't want to work with him, which was far from true. And I still don't know how many people she may have told. And I'm pretty sure the whole village thinks I'm chronically sleep deprived since I moved to attend university. Which, is quite the opposite, I haven't slept this much since 2001 (and yes, I was 3 years old in 2001).
Honestly, I don't understand the appeal of gossip. Yeah, I get that sharing information in that way can create a stronger bond because that's how group psychology works. But I don't get how people can feel okay with spreading personal information about other people. Where's their sense of morality? And what about their empathy? Can't they see the harms or do they simply not care? Do they want people to be talking about them?
Gossip can be harmless, talking about that funny thing your friend did in class is probably totally fine. And real talk, why can't we as humans gossip about good things? For real, why can't we gossip about how Matt from your math class got an A on his test or that Annie from accounting just got the cutest puppy? It's always about negative things, if it's genuinly something good then alright. But talking about personal things? Or embarrassing things someone you don't personally know well allegedly did? That's just vile in my book. I'm sure people have talked behind my back, and I honestly don't want to know what people have whispered about me. If someone comes to you with "hot gossip" that involves something that person wouldn't want people to be talking about, don't be an asshole. The least you can do is to not spread it further. But you should do more than that, more than I did, I hope more people get the courage to tell people to shut the fuck up.