Gossip in Friendship: Is It Really as Bad as Everyone Says It Is?

Does talking about one person to another make you a bad friend?

For quite some time, I’ve been considering the role of gossip in friendship. I’ve reflected on my own patterns and beliefs, and I’ve thought hard about where I’ve pushed the boundaries. 

My goal in this episode is to get to the root of gossip and the role it plays in relationships. I dive into some research about the history of gossip and include some guidelines I use in my personal life.

I don't think you need to feel guilty every time you talk about someone; guilt just makes us second-guess very normal, necessary human conversations. But I do think we can get a little more intentional about how we use gossip so that it serves rather than harms our connections.

In this episode you’ll hear about:

• The history of the word “gossip” – what it used to mean, who it referred to, and when it became associated with women’s social circles
• The rebranding of gossip as derogatory, and modern social scientists’ more neutral definition of gossip
• Different ways gossip can be useful, including processing confusing or painful situations and reality checking
• My own personal questions and guidelines for deciding whether it’s OK to talk about a friend to another friend, including the outcome test and the audience test

Resources & Links

Listen to Episode 99 about individualism in friendship with James Richardson.

Robin Dunbar’s social grooming research can be found in his book Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language

You can find more about Norm talk in this article from the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology: Norm talk and human cooperation: Can we talk ourselves into cooperation? 

Like what you hear? Visit my website, leave me a voicemail, and follow me on Instagram and TikTok!

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This episode is sponsored by Slowly, a digital pen pal app used by over 10 million people worldwide. If you’ve been looking for a low-pressure way to connect with someone completely outside your normal friendship circle, this is it. Exchange letters at your own pace, no small talk panic required.

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Transcript

Podcast Intro/Outro: 1:28

All right, gang. Here's to nights that turn into mornings and friends that turn into family. Cheers. Hello, hello, and welcome to the Friendship IRL podcast. I'm your host, Alex Alexander. Each week we talk about what is working(and what is not) in our friendships, community and connections. Have you ever wished you could sit down and have a conversation about what is really going on in your friendships? Well, you found your people. Join us as we dive into real life stories and explore new ways to approach these connections. Together, we're reimagining the rules of friendship For quite some time now, I have been really considering the role of a gossip in my life, in our lives, in friendship, in general. So I suppose you could say that I have been working on the episode that you are about to hear today, maybe for the last couple years. I have really been sitting with my own feelings, rules boundaries when it comes to what I say about other people when they're not there, which is maybe not something most people admit out loud, right? We have been told that we should not talk about other people when they are not there. That blanket statement that is bad, that makes you a bad friend, a bad person, even sometimes, right, there's this like moral weight that has been added when it comes to whether or not you talk about someone when they're not there, and I think it really has permeated everything, because I would say that even on social media, I see all these posts where they aren't exactly saying that gossip is bad, but there are posts that are like, I only want friends who say good things about me in the rooms I'm not in. So maybe we are allowed to talk about each other, but only in an absolutely positive light. And on one hand, I get it. I get the sentiment. There is some risk there, right? But when I really think about it, I don't know if my friends are really worried about me, if they're concerned, I hope they're not keeping that to themselves. And you might say, Well, Alex, they should bring that to you. Yeah, maybe, I mean, eventually, I hope they bring it to me. But I also understand the role of maybe talking to another mutual friend of mine and saying like, Hey, have you noticed this recently? Are you concerned? How do you feel about it? So as I was saying, I have really, really found myself sitting with a real question, what is the role of saying something negative, of calling out a behavior of trying to work through something hard with someone else before I talk to the person that I actually am having the problem with. And as somebody who has a lot of friends, and especially a lot of interconnected friendships, this is something that I've really been wrestling with so I did what I always do. I pondered in my brain endlessly. The episode you're about to hear today has 1000s of hours of thought. I've spent so much time reflecting on my own patterns, beliefs, what I have done that has felt right, and what I have done that has felt wrong, because I've definitely pushed the boundaries a little bit, and gone home and found myself thinking like, Okay, well, I think that was on the edge, or maybe over the edge, in all honesty, and I don't think I'm going to do that again. So today I want to get to an actual root of gossip and the role that it plays in our friendships. Because I think that maybe just giving this blanket statement that gossip is bad, I think we maybe have it all wrong. Now, before I get into modern gossip, the gossip you and I are doing on the daily let's talk just for a couple minutes here about the history of gossip. And I want to go like, way back, way, way, way, way back to the beginning, because the history of this word alone shows you how far we've come, how much things have changed. Most. Historical linguists trace the word gossip back to theOld English word Godsibb, G, O, D, S, I, B, B, which translates to God relative. Sib means kin or related. This was basically the word for your god parent, your spiritual kin, the person trusted enough to possibly like be at your birth or be a major player in your life. Over time, that term broadened to mean a very familiar like family acquaintance, a close friend, a neighbor, but it was still a word focused on a relationship and described a social role, not a speech style, not a behavior, a person that you trust you'll see later. Why? I think that's interesting. Then, somewhere between the 14th and 16th centuries, something shifted by the mid 1500s it referred to someone engaging in familiar or idle talk. So if you imagine a bunch of women having to do the washing right in a barrel, sitting around a well, and they're just chatting about life, they're talking about different social interactions they've had with people, people they feel safe with, people they don't feel safe with, who's happy, who's sad. What is the most recent news? What events are coming up? What happened at the events? And it really became known for this just kind of social type of talk, right? This type of conversation that builds actual connections, that builds a web that maybe you weren't present at that event, but it kind of gives you some sense of what happened. Maybe something bad happened. Maybe somebody got really intoxicated and started throwing things right. People should be aware of that. That's a safety concern. You should have your head on a swivel. I'm sure they didn't use that phrase back then, but that was the goal, was to try and make sure that people had some sense of how all of this interconnected web was feeling, looking, changing, adjusting, shifting, and most of that happened, not all, but a lot of it in women's circles. Now I want to pause here for a second, because this is not the first time that we've all ever seen something that is associated with the women's sphere and women's speech get turned into something derogatory, right? I think we could all think of a few examples. Now, a lot of historians actually argue that this rebranding was deliberate, that when women bond, share resources, share information with each other. It creates a really significant amount of social capital. That strong web right awareness, truth, honesty and rebranding that bonding that information sharing as dangerous or sinful helps delegitimize women's informal networks and the knowledge that they are sharing with each other. Now, I'm not going to go super deep down this road of history today. I think it's really interesting, and I've done a decent amount of research, but I don't think that that helps us in this episode. But if you want a fascinating rabbit hole. Go research the history of gossip, maybe the witch trials, the impact that the church has had on gossip and the actual criminalization and punishment of women who gossiped, it is wild, and it will really reframe a lot for you. So where does this leave us? Now, in 2026, modern social scientists actually define gossip in a pretty neutral way. It's a communication about a person who is not present. There is no built in moral judgment of the term gossip. So under that definition, gossip can be positive, like praise. It can be neutral, just information, or it can be negative, criticism or rumor, and it includes everything from face to face conversations to texts, DMs, all of it. Now, here's where it gets interesting, because let me give you some actual data. People gossip about 52 minutes a day on average, but only about 15% of all gossip is actually malicious, and men and women actually do it in equal amounts. So. This cultural story that gossip is shameful, catty, feminine, the research does not back that up.

Alex Alexander: 11:39

Most of what we call gossip is actually just neutral information sharing. It's how humans have always maintained social networks and figured out who to trust. Now, not all of you are as deep into the research about friendship and community and connection as I am so you maybe have never heard this name before, but there is a evolutionary psychologist named Robin Dunbar who has done multiple studies, many, many studies that are very groundbreaking in the space of friendship. And he has this one theory that I really find interesting when we're talking about gossip. He argues that language itself evolved as a more efficient way to socially groom each other. So let me explain that. I want you to think about some gorillas. Maybe you've seen them in the zoo, right? And they all sit around, sometimes in pairs or trios, and a lot of time they are physically grooming each other, right? They are picking at each other's fur, running their fingers through it. This is known as social grooming, but it's not really about hygiene. It's more about cementing alliances, reducing tension, building trust, maintaining relationships. And the problem is that sitting around and doing this is really time intensive, and you can only do it really with one individual at a time, so that limits how many connections you can strengthen at a time. Dunbar's theory is that as human group sizes increase, as you have more connection in your life, the use of vocal language, right, of talking is a way to essentially groom at a distance. So it is a way to cement alliances, reduce tension, build trust, and maintain relationships. And it's a way that you and I as one person can maintain a variety of relationships simultaneously, just by exchanging social information. So what we experience as gossip, it's just a mechanism, like we are literally wired to do this in order to build the social web that holds us up. So let's talk about when gossip is actually doing something useful. Because I don't think we talk about this enough, and I didn't really research this until after I had spent hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours thinking about it, which is honestly my normal process. But in my research, I found that a lot of people will literally sacrifice money just to warn someone about a bad actor in a group. Think about that. That's gossip as protection, gossip as care. And when I think about what gossip actually does in my friendships, in real life, it does a lot of things. It helps me process a confusing or painful situation. So if I'm having a struggle with a friend, I might go to another person in my life and talk about that situation, and honestly, that might involve talking negatively about the friend who I am hopefully going to go do repair with after I process the confusing or painful situation, sometimes it helps me reality check. So if I'm talking with this neutral third party friend, they might be like that is not normal. You shouldn't have to put up with that. And maybe I'd convince myself I should, right, but I needed somebody else to tell me. Maybe they're going to tell me I'm overreacting or I'm not. Now, on the other person's receiving end, this might warn them about someone who would hurt them, right? Maybe this other person really harmed me in some way. I just don't feel like I'll ever be able to build trust back with them. And now it has my neutral third party friend, if person A, who I need to do repair with, reaches out to person B, my neutral friend, they might be like, sorry, I'm not interested in working with you on that business venture. And it helps a community, a friend group, figure out what behavior is and is not okay, because as I am talking to my neutral friend, they are now understanding more about me, what matters to me, what boundaries I have, what I will and will not accept. So even though this situation has nothing to do with them, they are gaining a lot of information that actually is very positive for our relationship. Now you've heard me talk a lot about. About this idea of friendship culture. I've talked about this in so many episodes at this point. And as I was reading the research, a lot of researchers have something they call norm talk — N-O-R-M T-A-L-K, norm talk And what it really is is that when we talk about somebody else's behavior with our neutral friend or with a few friends, what we're actually doing is we're not just venting, right, but we are negotiating what is acceptable in our community. We're drawing lines. We're saying this is not how I want to be treated. This is not how you want to be treated, and this is one of many ways in which friendship culture is actually built and maintained, stripping all of that out in the name of not talking about people, I don't think that makes you a better friend. I think it actually leaves us all more isolated, less informed, and without the tools to actually protect each other. Okay, so here's where I want to get personal, because, yes, I have done a decent amount of research for this episode that gave me language for some things that I had been seen in my own friendships, but I have some personal questions that I have come up with that I ask myself when I am trying to decide whether it feels okay to talk about something or not, and honestly, sometimes I ask myself these questions in the middle of conversation. Now the first one is what I call the Outcome Test. Is this conversation trying to get somewhere. And to be clear, I'm not saying that the content has to be positive, right? Sometimes I might be talking about hard things, frustrating things, scary things, those are all on the table. This could be that negative, quote, unquote gossip that we are all told we shouldn't talk about, right? But is the direction of the conversation pointed towards something productive? Am I trying to figure something out, understand something find a way through brainstorm how I'm going to have this conversation to facilitate repair, or am I just having this conversation to go in circles in the negative, to marinate and be the victim, to really be malicious about this person I should be going to have repair with? Am I throwing them under the bus in just like a way that is not giving them the benefit of the doubt as a human also? Am I being truthful? Because if the outcome I want is a solution, whether that is repair, whether that is a boundary, whether it is knowing that I'm walking away from this friendship or this situation, am I being truthful? Because if I'm lying, that's malicious number one and number two, that isn't actually going to lead me to any sort of a solution, because the information that I'm telling this other person is not based on fact they can't really help me. And I think that when you are in this conversation, or you are walking into it, you can feel the difference when I think about a conversation I'm about to have, I can tell if I am veering into a place of just like pure rumination, or if I feel like I'm starting to be malicious, and I will say something like, Okay, I think I'm being too angry, like I need to take a step back here. I don't want to say things about this other person, just to say them because I'm mad. The point is to find a solution, and I will try and steer myself back to the outcome I went in with. Now I'm not perfect, and this is in real time mid conversation, and I will literally say to myself and the other person that I am talking to, like, Okay, I have veered and I really want to get back on track. It's almost like you're in a court, you know, where the judge tells you what is permissible and what needs to be omitted. Sometimes I think it's okay when you're gossiping to be like, hey, we need to omit that, right? I am going to own up that the last two minutes of my conversation has gone to a place that I don't like, and so let's strike that from the record. Basically, I'm going to work on not doing that again. It's definitely a practice that I have found myself having to be in over and over and over, like very present, right? I said in the beginning, I'm not perfect at this by any means. If you're going to allow yourself to gossip, then I think that it is a constant practice to try and figure out your own boundaries. The second one is the audience test. Who am I talking to and what is their relationship to the person I'm talking about? I always try to find a more neutral third party, especially if I'm venting or trying to process how to go about a repair I often want someone who my friend actually isn't that close to but can help me problem solve objectively, because they're not managing their own relationship with that person at the same time, they're focused on helping me find a resolution, and I mainly do this just because I don't want to force my friends to be in a situation where they feel split down the middle. Now, when the person I'm talking to is close to the other person, then the way that I monitor myself and my bar for how I go about gossip is way higher, right? I really have to be checking in about like, what is the actual point of this conversation? Is it to warn them? Is it to express concern? Is that my goal to see if this other person is also concerned about something I'm concerned about, is it to check in about how they feel about something and maybe negotiate that friendship culture, how do they feel about what happened? And then it's not me being right or venting right. It is truly a negotiation, because they might come in and be like, well, I thought that was fine, and then I need to go in and really process what they believe, how they experienced it, what they think the boundaries are, and it may or may not shift what I thought going into this conversation. I never want to go in when I'm looking at the audience test and just be talking negatively about the other person, especially if the person I'm talking to and the person I'm talking about are good friends at all costs. I want to avoid triangulation. I want to avoid putting my other friend in a spot where they feel like they need to come in and fight some part of my battle when it comes to repair, because the triangulation isn't healthy. It doesn't move anything forward, it just creates more of a mess. So at all costs, I'm trying to avoid that. Okay, so I also want to be honest about where I think gossip does cross a line, because I'm not here to tell you that all gossip is fine. It's not. I think that the main spot it gets harmful is when it's not true, or when you don't actually know if it's true, and especially if you don't know it's true and you don't disclose that, I think it's harmful when the motivation is to hurt someone, to compete with them, to humiliate them, to be seen as better than them in some way, shape or form. I think that it can be unacceptable and cross a line when I'm sharing it with someone who just doesn't need to know. I also think that it can be harmful. If somebody has explicitly asked me not to talk about it, right? I might be concerned about them. They might have told me something that I may want to go express concern about. But if they have told me disclosed it, and then they have explicitly asked me not to talk about it with anybody, I try my darndest to just navigate the situation with them. I also think that it crosses a line when it's out of spite or self interest and when it makes things worse, not better. So the question is never just what you're saying, it's why you're saying it and where it's going. So here's where I land on all of this. I'm not saying that it's all set in stone. I'm just giving you my work in progress thoughts about something I have spent so much time considering. I don't think you need to feel guilty every time you talk about someone. The guilt is not serving your friendships. It's just making you second guess very normal, necessary human conversation. What you can do is get a little more intentional about it. Run the two checks, notice the direction, notice the audience, and be really honest when you feel like you have veered outside what you think is acceptable, state it out loud. Because what that does is it helps set those communal understandings of what's acceptable and what's not, and then course correct when you do gossip at its best is a form of communal care. It's how we protect each other, understand each other and stay connected. And if you want to go even deeper into the communal side of this, I actually have an interesting episode, not exactly about the same topic, but I think it has a lot of overlap. Go listen to Episode 99 with James Richardson. Is individualism costing us more than we realize? Because the tension between this individualistic idea of never, ever, ever talking about someone if they're not there, and communal cultures, where you are connected to each other through this intense Web. That episode will add a whole other layer to this conversation for you, I think the goal isn't to stop talking about people, it's to talk about them in ways that actually have a positive impact. And with that, I'll see you next week.

Podcast Intro/Outro: 28:37

Thank you for listening to this episode of Friendship IRL. I am so honored to have these conversations with you. But don't let the chat die here. Send me a voice message. I created a special website just to chat with you. You can find it at

[alexalex.chat](http: 28:54

//alexalex.chat). You can also find me on Instagram. My handle,@itsalexalexander. Or go ahead and leave a review wherever you prefer to listen to podcasts. Now if you want to take this conversation a step further, send this episode to a friend. Tell them you found it interesting. And use what we just talked about as a conversation starter the next time you and your friend hang out. No need for a teary goodbye. I'll be back with a new episode next week.