Gossip 101

I have been fortunate to attend two lectures on the subject of gossip at different stages of my life. One lecture we learned the reasons that people engage in gossip. The reasoning boiled down to our self-centered need for attention, recognition and to stroke our own ego. Often times we engage in gossip to disconnect from the truth about ourselves. After all, if we are going on about someone else and how bad there situation is, we don’t have to face the ugly aspects of our own character.

Another such lecture involved an exercise where four people from the class room were selected to stand out of the room so they could not hear what was going on inside the class room while the rest of the class remained.

A short story was shared in class and one person was selected to relay the story to one of the four outside the class room. Then that person would relay the information to the next and so on.

By the time the last of the four came in to share the version they were given, the story was significantly different, not true to the original version and key facts were missing. The result was dramatic! In the matter of ten minutes and filtered through just four people, the story had changed to something quite different.

So it is the same fate with a piece of gossip, sadly.

To then repeat the compromised information would be spreading lies and slandering one another. We will look at the damaging effects of this tomorrow.