Gossip Quotes, Storytelling: Essence of Human Communication

Gossip Quotes, storytelling – gossip is a short form of storytelling and who would buy a hat without gossiping? Gossip is everywhere, regardless of its authenticity, it can entertain or pollute people’s mind. Our brains are wired for a story, so there’s no escape not to be attracted by a story aka gossip. Gossip quotes, storytelling, both are telling us the essence of human communication.  Let’s learn and use the wisdom of them to enrich our lives.

Gossip – Survival Skill

In fact, the survival of the human species itself may be dependent on our gossiping.

Gossiping has always served an important social function and once it used to be a critical survival skill. It’s one of the things that separates us from the animals.

The ability to share information with one another is what allowed early humans to live in increasingly large groups.

Humans thrive and have dominated via social interaction and in those interdependent relationships, we need to know who is, or, is not to be trusted, who is reliable and who will keep their word.

Knowing those things helped keep us safe, collaborate and ensured our survival.

The Art of Storytelling: Our Brains Are Wired for a Story

Today, it still serves the important function as it gives us information on how to better interact with other people, when we read something about how someone has acted or hear about how someone has acted then we hear the opinions people have of that action.

Gossiping can help people learn how to behave and how to understand social cues faster and more efficiently than direct observation can. You hone the skill of gossiping, you can tell a story better so your message can be understood better.

Let’s realize there are a good gossip and a bad one, how powerful they are and how it can serve you as an effective tool to thrive.

Enemy or Ally?

At some evolutionary level, we are constantly evaluating who is to be trusted, who is going to shaft us, who, now that is ‘with us’, could quite easily shift to being ‘against’ us. Gossiping provided us a hint of them.

Building Rapport by Self-Disclosure Storytelling

Consensus

In a pragmatic sense, “Reality” is the patterning of experience, achieved and maintained among humans by consensus. The main vehicle of consensus is language and concepts embedded in the language.

Any trivial gossiping will do; the value lies in the interaction, the sense of intimacy and the sense of importance that one gives to another when they stop to speak and stop to listen.

Small local groups thrive on local stories that obtain the most agreement and the most popular storytellers repeat the most agreeable stories.

Same Age Interests

People were most interested in stories that were about celebrities that were their same age because we can relate to people who are close to our own ages.

Gossip Quotes, Storytelling Secrets

No one gossips about other people’s secret virtues.

― Bertrand Russell, On Education

What excites you instead of knowing your neighbor’s secret virtues? What our brains are attracted is to know is something we usually don’t have access, mostly the negative ones. It gives us the sense of being someone who knows.

Popular culture is a place where pity is called compassion, flattery is called love, propaganda is called knowledge, tension is called peace, gossip is called news, and auto-tune is called singing.

― Criss Jami, Killosophy

There is nothing more annoying than having someone imposing their value on ours. People can believe what they want to believe in a way nothing can hurt or invade others’ territory. If anyone knocks on your door which is unwelcomed, you’d better ignore it than using your time to deal with it.

Never speak disrespectfully of Society, Algernon. Only people who can’t get into it do that.

― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

If you want to be respected, be respectful first.

Often those that criticise others reveal what he himself lacks.

― Shannon L. Alder

Can’t be truer. The more he talks, the more he exposes his ugliness.

I have Social Disease. I have to go out every night. If I stay home one night I start spreading rumours to my dogs.

― Andy Warhol

Often people that criticize your life are usually the same people that don’t know the price you paid to get where you are today. True friends see the full picture of your soul.

― Shannon L. Alder

And you can’t expect to have too many true friends. If you don’t have one, be your own true friend. Who else can be in the first place?

How would your life be different if… You walked away from gossip and verbal defamation? Let today be the day… You speak only the good you know of other people and encourage others to do the same.

― Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free

In other words, when you don’t have anything nice to say, keep your mouth closed and smile if you wish.

Some say our national pastime is baseball. Not me. It’s gossip

― Erma Bombeck

Well, we are hopelessly wired for a story, a gossip on a daily basis. Let’s see how we can use this in our favor instead of having people doubt your character.

All the quotes in this section come from Quotes About Gossip.

Good Gossip and Bad Gossip

Revelatory gossip can heal, depending on the motives of the talkers. If people are talking about good things others do, we want to emulate that good behavior. Good gossip keeps people in line.

In an environment where there is open communication, gossip is harmless and fills a function to form relationships.

Gossiping encourages social bonding. The people you gossip with become part of a group gives you a sense of connection with a group.
It can entertain each other, and be a vehicle of exchange important information.

On the contrary, bad gossip can destroy someone’s reputation, credibility, and bond of a group. It could not only ruin lives and careers, it could bring down governments when it went viral. The destructive power of gossip is beyond our imagination.

Girl gang gossip is a cliché, but that’s because it’s an inescapable social dynamic as girls beginning to socialize will if led by an alpha who uses gossip as a weapon, talk negatively about the other girl groups to reinforce their belonging to their chosen group. Yes, gossip is a weapon; gossip is that powerful. The purpose, barely perceived, is to create a clear boundary between them and those outside.

Do not engage yourself in bad gossip. You would lose your credibility. Be polite is the key. Show them you are not affected by their bad gossiping.

In organizations that have a low-trust culture, you get gossip that is in the form of warfare.  In these places, people engage in backbiting and gossip that is competitive in nature.

Positive Gossip as a Good Storytelling

People who lack substance in their own lives will still borrow other people’s news to peddle. It is what we rely on for entertainment. While they keep it positive, it’s fine. Just like reading a book, watching a tv or movie, it has a low chance to affect the relationships you have as long as you keep what you feel for yourself.

But gossip will also be used as a way to reassure members of a group that they are secure in the group—and it can also function to reaffirm the hierarchy within the group. In gossip quotes, storytelling secrets can be found and give us insight into our daily communication.

What gossips, stories give us, in the end, is the reassurances as we have seen. The sense of security, as childish as it may seem, that coherent sense of self is essential to our survival.

Either way, what you gossip mainly to deflect the attention of your own life. But hey, we’ve got a moment we want to forget our daily chores, right? Still, we know the aftertaste of bad gossip, let’s remind us to keep the gossip positive both for others and for ourselves.

References

Your Storytelling Brain (big think)
I and Thou Close Relationships (www.nutramed.com)

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