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When people gossip, they have an agenda, to spread something negative about someone else, and to turn the listener against the subject. Plus, as I said, there is also the secondary gain of feeling powerful, over both the subject and the listener.
I stand by my first post when I say that viewing gossip as some sort of malicious power-play is a very childlike way to think about it. The fact of the matter is that most of our lives IS other people, so it's no surprise that we spend so much time thinking and talking about those other people.
Yeah, but there is a big difference between talking about people, and gossiping about them. I maintain that gossip is different because there is a malicious agenda, and/or the gossiper gets some kind of personal gain from the gossip.
I'm a bit of a history buff, but when I find another history buff and we talk about the events of a historical figure's life, we're not gossiping. We are talking about the life of an interesting person. Even if some of those events were somewhat scandalous, there is no malice. Most likely the person is dead, or otherwise cannot incur any harm from us talking about him. In talking about him, we are not getting a "rush" out of spreading scandal or turning others against him, or feeling powerful by sharing the stories.
If I talk to my sister about a friend's recent issues with her dog's medical emergency, we are not gossiping. We're sharing info about a person we both know, and a dog we both care about, and we are extrapolating the information in order to better ensure the health of our own dogs. That's not gossip. Or, if you choose to broadly define "gossip" as "saying anything at all about another person" then it's certainly not "negative gossip." If my sister or I were to then go into a tangent about how this friend is not a good caretaker of her pets, and how because of her neglect, she caused the medical problem, then we're getting into gossip, or negative gossip. We'd then start feeling superior to our subject by maligning her.
I "get" how some people are just interested in other people's lives, even though I don't share that interest. But gossip is different from interest.
What I'm talking about, and what I intended to discuss in this thread is actual gossip. Negative gossip. The spreading of intimate and scandalous information about someone else, and getting a personal gain out of it.
Have you encountered this phenomenon? What could possibly be the motivation? At least if a person is gossiping about people the listener knows, they are carrying out their gossiping agenda (which, I guess, is to be malicious and turn others against the subject by spreading something scandalous about them). But what satisfaction can one derive from gossiping about a person the listener has never met? Is it more than just talking to hear oneself talk (yes my Mom can do that too, so no need to introduce the gossip about strangers).
In my experience, this sort of behavior is done by people who don't have enough going on in their own lives and so they need to spice things up a bit by bringing in some scandal. Alternatively, I've seen it from people who are privately feeling bad about something going on with themselves, so it's sort of a way of "leveling" by bringing others down--and in this case since it's behind their back and not to their face, it probably feels more acceptable to her. She would probably never say these things TO those people, and doesn't believe you will either. So it's a safe way for her to deal with whatever's going on upstairs for her without outwardly hurting anyone.
This fits with my hypothesis about my mother and about my co-workers. They are bringing others down to raise themselves up. But knowing that gossip in general is looked down upon, they probably decide to share these stories with people who don't know the subject, so they can still get the payoff while telling themselves that they are not doing something as distasteful as gossiping.
But from the good ol' Merriam-Webster dictionary comes the definition that I've always used:
gos·sip noun \ˈgä-səp\
: information about the behavior and personal lives of other people
: information about the lives of famous people
: a person who often talks about the private details of other people's lives
Can gossip be malicious? Sure, but it's not malicious by definition. To me, it sounds like your mom is just gossiping in the most general sense of the word.
Besides, I made it very clear from the first post that I was talking about malicious gossip, lest anyone think I just meant "talking about other people." Anyway, my thread, my definition
I know someone who not only gossips about adults she doesn't know, she actually gossips about her teenager's friends. It is horrifying to be near her and hear her say things like, "so and so is sleeping with her boyfriend" or "so and so failed his last three math tests." I understand that she is getting the info from her child, and it may even be true, but it is disgusting behavior!
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