Bingo! Gossip solves the problem identified by one of my all-time favourite quips:
“We can be offered only two kinds of information — what we already know, which is boring, and what we do not, which is humiliating.”
— Quentin Crisp
A good piece of gossip is tantalizing, not humiliating. We didn’t know it not through any fault of our own but because someone tried to keep it from us — and failed! Forbidden fruit makes the sweetest … jam? Jelly? Fruit Roll-Ups? All of the above!
“No one gossips about other people’s secret virtues.”
— Bertrand Russell
Like most guilty pleasures, gossip has shed its guilt. In fact, the prevailing wisdom is that it’s good for us. Just follow this crescendo of headlines in The Atlantic from likelihood to certainty:
2012: “Gossip Can Be Good”
2018: “Gossiping Is Good”
The throughline is the research of evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar, who suggested that a full two-thirds of what we talk about is gossip. More recently, his research team upped the stat to 85%. The vast majority of human conversation is “exchanging social information,” which may or may not be catty but probably is.
“I don’t care what anybody says about me as long as it isn’t true.”
— Truman Capote
An older and wittier defence of gossip came from good old W.H. Auden, who argued in favour of talking about people behind their backs in 1937, with a few small caveats. “Who would rather learn the facts of Augustus’s imperial policy than discover that he had spots on his stomach?” he asks. “No one.” Gossip, he argues, is a healthy way to release tension: “How often I have worked off ill-feeling against friends by telling some rather malicious stories about them, and as a result met them again with the feeling quite gone.” The keys, he explains, are to “never hesitate to invent, but invent in detail, never gossip to people who’ll run off straight away to the victim, never gossip to people with moral principles, and don’t have any conscience about being a gossip.”
“History is gossip.”
— Robert Frost
And yet. This is what I’ve come to think of as a protein-donut argument, after the packaged snack I bought on a whim at the San Francisco airport earlier this year. Drumroll glazed chocolate donuts are high in protein and fibre, plant based, low sugar — and even gluten free! They’re essentially the same product John Belushi once advertised on Saturday Night Live, explaining with a cigarette in hand how he’d won the decathlon: “I logged a lot of miles training for that day, and I downed a lot of donuts. Little Chocolate Donuts: They taste good and they’ve got the sugar I need to get me going in the morning.” Too good to be true? No, even better than that! They are the perfect food, if you squint. With your tongue.
“I hate to spread rumours, but what else can one do with them?”
— Amanda Lear
As Shayla Love puts it in a recent Vox piece: Are the people you’re gossiping about relatable humans or wacky characters? If they’re two-dimensional, you lose compassion, the ability to learn from their mistakes, and eventually interest. And as she writes of Auden’s essay, he “makes a pretty good argument for how to be a good gossip. But don’t forget that gossip and drama nearly destroyed his communal living experiment with other writers and artists … just a couple of years later, as documented in the book February House.” Donuts and gossip are delicious; calling them nutritious is just an excuse to have seconds.
“A gossip is one who talks to you about others; a bore is one who talks to you about himself; and a brilliant conversationalist is one who talks to you about yourself.”
— Lisa Kirk
Perhaps the gossip-is-good theory coincides with the rise of the personal brand: We all need to project a certain polished version of ourselves into the digital world, and the gap between that image and the analog reality is fodder for chitchat. We all have spots on our bellies, right? And for next week?
About once a month, my paid subscribers and I exchange some of the best things we’ve read, seen, heard, and experienced in a special issue called Get Wit Picks. This week, I enjoyed Ian Frazier’s latest Shouts & Murmurs, a classic example of an aggressively dumb premise. In “The Scourge of A.1.,” he pours steak sauce all over recent apocalyptic fears of human extinction, along with a bonus condoms-condiments joke. It’s a direct descendant of Gilda Radner’s confusion about why everyone was so upset about all the violins on television, and I’m here for it.
Get Wit Quick No. 379 wasn’t brought to you by little chocolate donuts, but if anyone wants to bring little chocolate donuts to me, I’ll probably eat them. Just don’t bring the ones filled with allulose. The mascot of this newsletter is Magnus the magpie, who would take any donut. The title font is Vulf Sans, the official typeface of the band Vulfpeck. The inferior-for-now and still-free sloppelganger is at getwitquicker.replit.app. The book was Elements of Wit: Mastering the Art of Being Interesting. You’ll never believe what those who tap the ❤️ below have over everyone who doesn’t!
Biblical gossip, low-stakes: "What's the buzz? Tell me what's a-happening."
Biblical gossip, high-stakes: "Thou shalt not bear false witness."
Dear Benjamin,
Thank you for sharing!
Some of my fave quotes from this dispatch:
“We can be offered only two kinds of information — what we already know, which is boring, and what we do not, which is humiliating.”
— Quentin Crisp
“No one gossips about other people’s secret virtues.”
— Bertrand Russell
“I don’t care what anybody says about me as long as it isn’t true.”
— Truman Capote
“History is gossip.”
— Robert Frost
“I hate to spread rumours, but what else can one do with them?”
— Amanda Lear
“A gossip is one who talks to you about others; a bore is one who talks to you about himself; and a brilliant conversationalist is one who talks to you about yourself.”
— Lisa Kirk
So, all of them! Thank you!
Love
Myq