Gossip as Social Currency

Gossip is a form of legal tender, a social coinage we enjoy spending or saving

To hear gossip is like finding coins in the street. “I can use this later,” you may think as someone tells you something, in a whispered hush, or from a quiet place. Some people freely give their gossip away. They are the spendthrifts of this information economy. They are the big tippers, the big spenders. They want you to know that that is a trifle, and there is plenty more where that came from. They are connected to a vast pool of information, etc., or perhaps they simply have the confidence of someone, or someone close to that someone, about whom they gossip.

Gossip nearly always has a victim, long known to sociologists as the object of gossip, or simply the Gossip Object (GO). It is as though the sorry face of the Gossip Object is on a dollar bill that is handed around as his fate is discussed by others. Because gossip is indulged in even by those close to the victim, gossip almost always involves a betrayal. Often the Gossip Object himself first issued the news by telling a trusted friend, and the news is then spread around. The Gossip Object has his own reasons for spilling the beans. Secrets are difficult to bear alone. Thoughts, like money, lose their value when taken out of circulation. The Gossip Object may even have genuinely trusted…