Letters to the Editor
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Word to the wise girls:
FYI to posters who have friends who love, love, love to babble about everybody they know: If you've had an abortion, but don't want 200 or so perfect strangers to know, keep it to yourself.
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gossip
I'm a novelist and a poet. My fiction is not autobiographical, largely because I do not like gossip. Have long distinguished, as several other letter writers do here, between storytelling and gossip. Story-telling I see as a deep and honorable human need. One of the fundamental elements of gossip is taking pleasure in the misfortunes of another. It is quite possible to be interesting about others without being catty.
It is not necessary to give up the pleasures of story-telling in order to put a lid on the all-too-human vanity of gossip.
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Female Troubles?
A nice companion piece to the essay in FHM about how some dude decided to stop scratching his balls for 3 months.
Salon! Just because it's about something 'feminine' doesn't mean it falls under your mandate.
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Maturity
Grow up, young lady! Gossip in any form has no value. You waant to write? Write a letter to your grandchild!
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Lighten Up Folks!
I found the piece amusing. Don't take yourselves so seriously and a bit of advice: Laugh at least once a day. Thanks Ms. Silag.
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You're shallow and annoying as hell
One doesn't have to read much to conclude what that you are a none-too-bright and insecure woman who dervies your self esteem from putting others down. It's annoying just to read you and your inevitable cutesy conclusion that you must continue your catty ways lest you become boring. Everything in your essay screams "I'm bad, but aren't I adorable?!". No, you're not, you're irritating as hell. One would surmise that you aren't succeeding in your work or emotional life and so you resort junior-high in-group behavior to deflect attention from your hollow self.
Nice try to pretend that discussing finances and other practical matters must be gossip, therefore you must continue to gossip in order to function. Gossip is trivial, catty, self-righteous chatter that functions to make you feel falsely superior and pseudo-bond with others of low self esteem.
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I can think of few ways -- after absenteeism and tardiness -- to signal to your boss that you are NOT the one for advancement than to be the local gossip-mongerer ...
I've never been a gossip and generally dispise the practice as both unfair and mean spirited -- the subject of gossip rarely if ever has ANY effective way to respond and gossip, by its nature, is about 99% negative -- it's right up there with rumor and innuendo.
Gossip rarely, if ever, improves one's opinion of anyone else ... and can taint an otherwise neutral professional relationship.
I recall being told, out of the blue, that an associate beat his wife. (I was told by his partner and did not doubt the information) It was definitely something I did not need to know. I never repeated the information, however, I did spend a quite LOT of time trying to figure out what "to do" and how to feel about that information. Eventually, I just decided it was -- in fact -- none of my business and just felt sad as it suggested that this brilliant man was even more frustrated and ill-tempered than was obvious to everyone who knew him and that his home and marriage was neither exempt from his explosive temper nor a refuge from his frustrations. It took about a month before I could look him in the eye without a lurching feeling.
In business, it's a serious liability. Confidentiality is often highly valued as a personal trait and may be required professionally. It may not be a "firing" offense where you work, but it certainly suggests a time-wasting, high-school, water-cooler/lunch break mentality. Too bad we don't know the author's age. If she's 30 or over and still kibbitzing endlessly, she's in trouble, imho.
Also, one does not NEED to talk ALL.THE.TIME to be social or popular. There are always CURRENT EVENTS, and MOVIES and even the latest issue of PEOPLE magazine to chatter about endlessly. There's TELEVISION and WEATHER and TRAFFIC ... there are holidays and relatives ... and Dear Abby ...
Chattering endessly -- whether about "the lives of others" or something else -- may just be a bad habit but I've found it's often a defense mechanism to avoid talking about oneself and the pathetic state of one's own finances, lovelife, ambitions.
I think the author should consider finding BETTER FRIENDS for herself as part of her own development, social and otherwise, y'know people who actually DO things and THINK things... She might actually start DOING THINGS and thinking things her ownself ... at which point she may find the doings of others strangely IRRELEVANT to her own life. In some circles, it's call "getting a life."
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We don't need to be told to lighten up: we enjoy our work
We aren't projecting our innate aversion to gossip onto a virtually content-free article. And we don't need the patronizing rubbush that we should lighten up about it.
Gossip is often a covert means of undermining working relationships. The busybodies I know like to tsk tsk about the messy divorce, involving allegations of domestic violence, of an academic who was dismissed from an Ivy league school under the cloud of sexual harassment. If they happen to have some complaint with me, they have no compunction about going far beyond whatever minor injury they feel to spread nonsense about me at my place of work. I don't go to their places of work to spead hurtful nonsense about them. Such people are to be avoided.
Don't you have work to do? I rather enjoy my work. Why don't you?
Why do people who dislike the idea that there is always something constructive to be done next opine that an aversion to gossip is some psychological projection? A most fatuous pot calling the kettle black.
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Bravo, hontonoshijin. You defined the difference between "gossiping" and true storytelling beautifully.
"Story-telling I see as a deep and honorable human need. One of the fundamental elements of gossip is taking pleasure in the misfortunes of another."
Thank for concisely summing up the point. Storytelling (even the postmodern variety) is about making meaning; gossiping is about humiliating and deconstructing.
I have dropped friends once I discovered that they were gossiping about me behind my back -- yes, taking pleasure in my insecurities or misfortunes. And gossips are never brilliant storytellers because all of their material is derivative -- and then filtered through a tiny narrow sieve of a mind.