‘Gossip’ − such a small yet lethal word, having the power to destroy and wreak total havoc! Gossip is rarely well intentioned and mostly selfish... Why do humans jump instinctively onto any news they consider ‘juicy’ to spice it up and spread it as gossip, and why does it have such impact?

Mostly people gossip because they want to feel superior by being the first ones to have known about something. Also humans generally like it when others are worse off than themselves and, in this way, they can more easily accept their own boring and uneventful or miserable life... (People are not necessarily friendly or well-wishing by nature, you know.) Others yet like to be part of a specific group and feel that by sharing gossips with others they are actually doing things together and so, getting more importance, as momentarily attention is focused on them. Hence the sense of control that this activity procures them is too good to stop. It gives them power by down grading someone else.

Gossiping also satisfies a very primitive need − the need to hurt and destroy − often out of revenge or jealousy − as character assassinating makes you feel better somehow now that you no longer have the opportunity to go hunting or fight for territory physically! It fills a gap! Then there is definitely boredom − idleness is the mother of vices, they say, and when someone has no meaningful thing to occupy his mind, and is bored, what is better than some gossip-mongering? Truth is sometimes so uninteresting and so, an idle imagination tends to create destructive scenarios to render it spicier!

I personally believe that gossiping is an act of despair often masked out into something else. It gives the gossiper the impression that he/ she exists by giving him/ her a ‘role’. And what's more, people love listening to gossips and so it never fails to have an impact however far-fetched it can be. It does tell us a lot about our own nature, doesn’t it?