[Redway]

And when I say gossip I don’t just mean ordinarily-talking about people who aren’t there (like any normal person living in the world would) or a bit of good-natured ribbing but (rather) this business of dirt-talking people you either don’t know very well or aren’t actually confirmed as true (from benign rumours to massive smear campaigns). Do you avoid it and people who seem to get their energy from such indulgence like the plague ('who is that mad verbal diarrhoeic trying to get me involved in drama what ain't got nowt to do wi. me?') or are you privy to ‘toxic’ tidbiting, yourself?

[MTVN]

It's what I live for

[Niamh.]

Originally Posted by MTVN

It's what I live for

Only reason you come on TiBB

[Redway]

It goes without saying that a lot of us on here are more socially-outspoken (if you dig me) on here than we are in real life but the things I say on here aren’t incredibly-telling or ‘incriminating’ as such because I’m not known that personally to anyone on here and the stuff I say is stuff I know to be true (because they’re my experiences). Gossip is more rumour-lite and public (in the sense that the gossipee’s basic need for privacy is often blatantly-disregarded).

[parmnion]

Knock on anyones door and there are skeletons behind it.

Gossip has no place in todays society

[LeatherTrumpet]

People huv tae know

[Cherie]

Love a bit of gossip tbf as long as it isn't malicious

[Zizu]

I simply do not gossip ... if you say anything negative or pass on something bad to someone else it will always come back to BITE you in the backside


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[Niamh.]

Originally Posted by Zizu

I simply do not gossip ... if you say anything negative or pass on something bad to someone else it will always come back to BITE you in the backside


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

Gossip isn't always bad stuff or negative though

[Nicky91]

i gossip a lot


love watching entertainment news gossip shows here in my nation

[Cherie]

Originally Posted by Niamh.

Gossip isn't always bad stuff or negative though

Indeed it could be speculating who gets a job that is up for grabs and stuff like that, you work in a school Zizu I find it hard to believe there are no rumours about anything going around

[Zizu]

Originally Posted by Niamh.

Gossip isn't always bad stuff or negative though

True .. bad/negative news sells better than good though..


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[Zizu]

Originally Posted by Cherie

Indeed it could be speculating who gets a job that is up for grabs and stuff like that, you work in a school Zizu I find it hard to believe there are no rumours about anything going around

There are plenty of rumours but I don’t participate in the spreading of them


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[Redway]

I don’t mind it if I know the other person well (or involves only things I know for certain to be true) and it stays behind closed doors but otherwise I just don’t want to know. People who make a habit of taking the “private” out of people’s private lives are no friends of mine.

[Redway]

And just to be clear, the type of gossip I’m talking about isn’t positive (I don’t even class. that as gossip). I’m talking about things that may or may not be malicious but that you wouldn’t say to the person’s face (and aren’t necessarily confirmed as being true) and you know that the other person would rather you didn’t blast to the nearest forty people. Breaking professional confidentiality and boundaries thereof just because you fancy a good unthinking goss. with the resident blabbermouth is a common one and it doesn’t end well.

[Redway]

Originally Posted by Cherie

Love a bit of gossip tbf as long as it isn't malicious

Yeah, I don’t mind juicy tidbits so long as they’re positive but again that’s not the type of ‘gossip’ I’m talking about.

[GoldHeart]

Originally Posted by Redway

I don’t mind it if I know the other person well (or involves only things I know for certain to be true) and it stays behind closed doors but otherwise I just don’t want to know. People who make a habit of taking the “private” out of people’s private lives are no friends of mine.

We all know that people who gossip like that, would hate it if the shoe was on the other foot. They themselves would not appreciate being talked about, typical really.

[Redway]

Originally Posted by GoldHeart

We all know that people who gossip like that, would hate it if the shoe was on the other foot. They themselves would not appreciate being talked about, typical really.

Mhm-hm. I’ve encountered one-too-many people like that over the past two years alone. I don’t know if Covid tapped some people’s heads and made them more gossipy (maybe the hyper-outgoing folk didn’t get their tidbity supply during lockdown/s and over-compensated for that forced deprivation by becoming even more boundary-intrusive and gossipy than ever before) but it’s just not something that works for me. In practice the vast, vast majority of us are guilty of the more negative kind of gossip I’m specifically talking about (I am) but there’s a difference between tearing people you hate/find super-extra to shreds with your best mates on a Saturday night over a bottle of wine and a boxset (etc.) behind closed doors and publicly-shaming and embarrassing people you might not even know that well (if at all, really) in the first place. And the thing with that kind of gossip is that one story quickly becomes another (partly because people by default mould what they hear in accordance with their own experiences, which are often highly-subjective and not experienced or lived in exactly the same way by any other living person, which is what makes us all beautifully-unique). The result is that by person 3 the story becomes distorted beyond recognition and the ‘gossipee’ wouldn’t even recognise themselves in any of it. I just feel like talking about someone who essentially doesn’t exist is a waste of saliva but some people just can’t help themselves.

I’m not saying any of that to take the moral high-ground (I’m the last person to do that because that’s just not how I live my life, at all) but I do think that rumours and smear campaigns (which may or may not have even the slightest element of truth in them) do a lot more damage than people realise. Either say what you know for sure or say it behind closed doors. Tarnishing someone’s reputation isn’t worth it if they haven’t actually done the thing they’re being accused of or they had such good reasoning behind it that even the first person’s interpretation was ultimately-flawed.

And yeah (to respond directly to your post, really). People who gossip so much that it might as well be their 9-to-5 + shift-job are (like all narcissistic-lite folk) deeply-insecure 80% of the time. Often their gossip is a projection of their insecurities (with the unfortunate unassuming person roped into their nonsense just being a catalyst) and they often play on the fact that the people they’re talking to don’t know the gossipee very well, which means that their gossip can remain unchecked for ages (often until the gossipee - who often knows they’re being gossiped about - decides to fight back/call out people). Someone people will believe someone’s Bin Laden’s incarnate and a nonce on someone’s say-so. Having or not having a reasonable amount of familiarity with whoever the person in question is makes a lot of difference but even then some people will believe literally anything if it was sold in a charming enough way.

[Redway]

Originally Posted by Cherie

Love a bit of gossip tbf as long as it isn't malicious

Ditto (kind of). I’m too wary of the damage it does at the malicious (or at least unwarranted) end of the scale to say that I love it in any capacity but as long as it’s appropriate contextually and within reason I don’t hate it. But wither way when that’s the only topic of conversation I’m out. Getting it out of your system on a Friday/Saturday night after a long week (or tidbity memories you don’t have time to access or talk about or access during the week) is fair enough as far as vices go and pretty harmless. Beyond or outside that it’s either uselessly-uninteresting or malicious (or at the least toxic) to me.

[Redway]

Anyone get up to much *healthy-ish/catty-ribbing-over-Netflix-and-Lambrini/San-Miguel* goss. over the weekend?

[swine]

I try (and often fail) not to gossip. Even if what is being said is undeniably true, it's best not to talk badly about others, unless it's for a positive reason, like warning someone about a person lying to them. In my religion we call gossip "the evil tongue" and try hard not to engage in it. I am terrible at following this rule because I'm a bitch. A bitch in progress, though.

[GoldHeart]

I'm not into malicious gossip for the sake of it, if someone has done something bad or they've done something which has an affect on the people around them or a situation, then I might get sucked in ... but again it depends.

I also feel like I've been the one being told gossip more,than actually doing the gossiping myself..if that makes sense .

[rusticgal]

I love a bit of juicy gossip...

[Redway]

Originally Posted by swine

I try (and often fail) not to gossip. Even if what is being said is undeniably true, it's best not to talk badly about others, unless it's for a positive reason, like warning someone about a person lying to them. In my religion we call gossip "the evil tongue" and try hard not to engage in it. I am terrible at following this rule because I'm a bitch. A bitch in progress, though.

I see what you mean. Like I said none of what I’m saying is coming from such a moral-high-ground stance because most people gossip at-least a little and I’m guilty-as-charged (even if only-just) but the difference between me and people who are actually notorious gossips is that the stuff I ‘gossip’ about (on the relatively-rare occasion that I do divulge) either involves things I’ve directly-experienced (as opposed to intrusive/nosy speculations about the personal-lives of people I really don’t have a reason to be doing anything other than minding my own business towards) and/or me having-known the ‘gossipee/s’ for a while and in some at-least-fairly significant capacity. And even then I say what I want to say in closed circles between family and close friends and between us no-one would ever blab to the outside world at-large and tarnish someone’s reputation for what might-well be for no reason.

I think that mode-and-type of gossip is fine but it’s when that basic level of discretion isn’t granted and you get people bad-mouthing people out-loud to anyone with ears that it becomes a problem. When it’s out there Chinese-whispers shouldn’t be anything other than an actual game.

I don’t talk to just-anyone if I don’t have an actual reason to in-the-first-place (or at-least like them enough to even-begin to want to do a bit of free chit-chat with them - and I have a long list of people I really don’t like so coupled with my natural reserve that’s that) so naturally whatever I do end-up saying stays guarded-enough. People with very outgoing/chatty personas might struggle to reel themselves in when it comes to things like that but keeping my mouth relatively-shut’s never been an issue for me.

[Redway]

Originally Posted by GoldHeart

I'm not into malicious gossip for the sake of it, if someone has done something bad or they've done something which has an affect on the people around them or a situation, then I might get sucked in ... but again it depends.

I also feel like I've been the one being told gossip more,than actually doing the gossiping myself..if that makes sense .

Even then I try not-to until I’ve heard both sides of the story. Sometimes the party who claims to be negatively-affected by someone’s actions did a lot more wrong to them than they choose to admit/let-own and (intentionally-or-otherwise) paint the other person as a total villain. Sometimes it’s a case of them being given a taste of their own medicine (for-example) and them being too emotionally-immature to deal with it without starting a smear-campaign against them in reactive retaliation.