Rumor Has It

By Dan Zak
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, May 11, 2008

"I am suggesting that language evolved to allow us to gossip . . . to facilitate the bonding of social groups . . . it mainly achieves this aim by permitting the exchange of socially relevant information."

-- Robin Dunbar, "Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language" (1996)

"RE: Sluts Sluts Sluts

"I think that loud mouth girl from Starbucks is ALSO qualified to be in the listing above . . . No question that girl is nuts! I think my friend said her name was Cinthya."

-- post on JuicyCampus.com (2008)

When gossip clown Perez Hilton gossips on his blog about the stars of "Gossip Girl," we wonder how far we've come in spite of technology. The absurd self-reflexivity, the gazing at one another's navels, the swirling infinity of gossiping about a show about gossip -- it's like that snake that eats itself. And what are we left with? A reptile gagging on its own business.

Celebrity gossip, which clogs checkout aisles and runs wild in cyberspace, overshadows a more integral (and fascinating) form of gossip: the person-to-person kind, the overheard whispers, the pedestrian skinny. Gossip has been around forever, and, for almost as long, it has been labeled a vice. Moses descended Mount Sinai with a sub-commandment forbidding the bearing of tales. German philosopher Martin Heidegger dismissed gossip as a waste of energy. Only in very recent history have researchers and journalists started writing pieces with heretofore provocative titles.

"Gossip May Be Virtuous."

"Why Gossip Is Good for You."

"In Praise of Gossip: Indiscretion as a Saintly Virtue."

These conclusions are akin to the Food and Drug Administration reporting that fried dough is, in fact, nutritious, and the more you eat, the longer you'll live. But what does it all mean when it mutates on the Internet, spreading swiftly and sensationally?

For much of this year, college newspapers and m edia commentators have hemmed and hawed over JuicyCampus.com, a Web forum that provides a blank slate on which students can write anything they want about anyone. While the site attracts a large share of lurid, hateful and nonsensical ramblings (the stuff you'd find anywhere on the Internet), there is also gossip that includes full names and sordid details. Since its birth in August, JuicyCampus has courted the outrage of students who claim defamation and of state attorneys general who claim consumer fraud.

The site's 24-year-old founder, Duke University alumnus Matt Ivester, thinks it's all very natural. Social networking has moved online. Shouldn't gossip be a part of that?

"People talk about us being the opposite of Facebook and MySpace," notes Ivester, who says the site gets tens of thousands of hits a day. "We're completely anonymous. There are no profiles. We're filling that void. . . . People love celebrity gossip, and in many ways what we're doing is changing from Hollywood celebrities to campus celebrities."

This may be a vainglorious claim on Ivester's part, but Internet gossip might be a tempting venture for someone searching for "some kind of false and illusory prima donna status," as college senior Gregory N. Wolfe, 21, worded it in a column about JuicyCampus this year for the Cornell Daily Sun. Wolfe thinks JuicyCampus, apart from its innocuous ramblings, is damaging to communities because charges are unanswerable and viewed by thousands of people who have no reference point.

"At least in the typical telephone gossip you have source attribution, you know who's trustworthy," he says in a phone interview. "But you don't get this here, and you can't answer to it."

Instead of making the rounds in one social circle, Internet gossip jumps among them, and the information loses essential background information and credibility. "Traditional gossip occurs in a context, among people who know the person being gossiped about," writes George Washington University law professor Daniel Solove in his book "The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet." "But the Internet strips away that context, and this can make gossip even more pernicious."

Which is exactly what JuicyCampus does. Solove considers the site to be a paradigm of problems created when gossip and the Internet intersect: The site is not liable for anything users post, and the users are generally protected because they are anonymous. The rights of privacy and free speech engage in a confounding tango, and Solove thinks privacy is being compromised a little too much.

"I've thought long and hard to come up with an elegant solution . . . but there really isn't anything," he says. "There isn't a law that will make everyone play nice. At best the [existing] law can push norms in one direction or help raise awareness of a problem."

* * *

Gossip has always left a trail, but now its ability to be recorded is redefining the norm, especially in wired workplaces. Forty-three percent of employers monitor e-mails sent and received, according to a 2007 survey by the American Management Association and the ePolicy Institute, a training and consulting firm. If you're gossiping about a boss, co-worker or client, management may be reading over your shoulder. Many employers consider it a fireable offense, especially if the gossip involves the company and is communicated outside the workplace.

"Employees in their 20s or teens are so accustomed to communicating online, they tend to think nothing of expressing really personal thoughts or provocative opinions and gossip with people who they consider to be their closest online friends," says Nancy Flynn, executive director of the ePolicy Institute. "But at this point there's absolutely no secret in cyberspace. If you go online to spread a rumor or gossip, you cannot expect it to be read only by your select group."

E-mails and instant messages are often stored. Flynn recommends you review your company's policy on e-mail and personal use of computers. And if you want to gossip, do it face-to-face in a place where you can't be overheard. Don't commit it to writing. Stick to the classic, virtuous pre-Internet model:

"Schedule a round of golf or take someone out to lunch," Flynn says.

* * *

The Internet is just the latest evolution of a habit that goes back millions of years. British anthropologist Robin Dunbar links the grooming practices of apes to the gabbing practices of humans, activities that express friendship and loyalty.

"We begin with self-disclosure," says Monique Turner, a professor of communication at the University of Maryland. "We tell people about us. When we talk about ourselves, we see how receptive people are and if they share back. So now we've developed a relationship where we share about each other. As that grows, we feel more comfortable about disclosing about others, which is essentially gossip. It's just a way to bond with people. It's brain candy."

In the past eight years, Turner has gathered data on how we view gossipers by putting more than 400 students (averaging 20 years of age) in situations where they are gossiped to by either friends or strangers, positively or negatively.

Turner found positive gossip (especially if it's humorous) increases trust and likability in a gossiper, while negative gossip (again, especially if it's humorous) does the opposite. Amusing scuttlebutt does not have the negative consequences usually associated with gossip, as long as the information being shared is positive. Another factor to keep in mind is the pertinence of gossip, which was also part of the experiment.

"Your gossip will be better off if it's relevant to your life, if you have the right to be talking about that," Turner says. "You should stray from sharing other people's personal information that has nothing to do with you."

Some may argue that as long as you're interested in a topic, it's your business. This is certainly the case in a workplace, a petri dish for gossip. Sharing personal information about others helps us to map out the territory, to fill out personality sketches of co-workers and to maneuver our way from one goal to the next. For example, hearing that a manager has a short temper and a disdain for small talk can help you properly prepare for an interview with him or her.

* * *

With gossip mutating on the Internet and getting face time in academic studies, what about good, old-fashioned ethics -- the stuff by which Moses and Heidegger drew their own conclusions? As befits our era, there is a flowchart for navigating the murky waters of gossip ethics.

Professor of philosophy Emrys Westacott, who teaches at Alfred University in New York and is working on a book of essays tentatively titled "The Virtues of Our Vices," was having dinner with friends several years ago when someone began to inveigh against gossip. It was always wrong, the friend said. Westacott disagreed and found himself spending several hours the next morning drafting an argument that eventually turned into an article titled "The Ethics of Gossiping" in the International Journal of Applied Philosophy.

The article includes a flowchart. It starts with a simple question: Is the gossip a lie? If so, stop. If it isn't, ask yourself more questions until you arrive at an ethical diagnosis.

The dynamics of discourse are changing, and with it the rules of etiquette, Westacott says. Gossip spreads quickly and voluminously online, but in many ways this proliferation and the accompanying anonymity dilute its impact. Sure, someone can gossip virtually about someone else's sexual promiscuity, but does it really bear any social currency besides being crude and unfortunate?

"In some ways there's a greater possibility to do harm, but in other ways we sort of adjust to the fact that so much goes into the public domain now," Westacott says. "I'm not sure a site like [JuicyCampus] violates people's privacy any more than someone writing graffiti violates privacy. . . . As far as free speech goes, I suppose people have that right. I think what will change is our take on gossip, our perspective, our skepticism, our willingness to believe it. Perhaps also our sense of how importan t it is."