So Here’s the Thing…: Notes on Growing Up, Getting Older, and Trusting Your Gut(27)

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This is not going to be a complete lecture about the evils of gossip. And I’m not going to chastise anyone for engaging in any version of it at all. Of course gossip happens. It happens a lot. It can be fun and harmless. When I worked in politics, where tensions are always high and people are always having affairs, gossip was particularly rampant. We all enjoy a good gossip session, and often, it can be harmless—a way to let off steam, to compare notes. You can even learn something from gossip. The kernels of truth are usually there. (Though not always—and you can’t afford to assume.) Sometimes, gossip even works as a way for those with less power to work around those who have more and may be using it unfairly. And gossip as an adult is obviously very different from the ruthless rumor-mongering most of us engaged in in school. Adults are savvier, more careful with their secrets. (Well, sometimes. Sometimes they’re much, much less careful.) But as you age, the stakes in gossip get higher and higher: In school, everyone is more or less immature and not expected to know any better. You also know everyone will eventually graduate and move on. But there’s no designated start-over point in life. The motivations—and consequences—behind gossip are always worth thinking about. If someone’s gossiping with you, it makes you feel like you’re in an inner circle. Most of the time it doesn’t occur to us that someone could be saying the same kinds of things about us on the other side of town. And with social media, you can morph into a twenty-first-century Nancy Drew and put all the pieces together to confirm the story you’ve developed in your head.

So the question is not “How can I stop gossiping?” It’s “How can I gossip responsibly?”

Some basics: Know when you should receive the gossip but not perpetuate it. If someone wants to tell me something, that’s fine—sometimes it’s more than fine; it’s delightful—but I try not to repeat it. If I do repeat it, I’m taking a risk, but I try to minimize the risk by repeating it to trustworthy people. (That I was considered a trustworthy person to the original person in possession of gossip is part of the point. Things can easily get out of hand!) Ideally, the people you tell could be helpful in the situation, or they might need to know. But of course that’s an idealistic framing; you may have some friends who exist entirely for the purposes of gossiping together. That’s not bad, per se, but it is worth thinking about when it comes to serious pieces of information. Because there’s also a big difference between gossip and secrets. Sometimes people will come to you to get something off their chest or to ask for advice; turning that moment of vulnerability into an opportunity for petty self-advancement, or a quick hit of conspiratorial camaraderie, is cruel.

When you’re participating in rumor-worthy behavior, you also have to be very, very careful, because gossip works in sneaky ways. Even the most insignificant-seeming action can trigger the alarm. On the Kerry campaign, for instance, there was a rumor that a married man was having an affair with an attractive younger woman. Everyone would gossip about it, but I assumed it wasn’t true—just an example of heightened nerves driving speculation. I was in charge of hotel rooms back then, and we didn’t have a big travel agency (since it was the beginning of the campaign) and I’d call the hotel to confirm everything was copacetic with the check-in process. On one trip, I called the Holiday Inn or wherever it was, and the receptionist informed me—just as part of protocol—that the attractive younger woman hadn’t checked into her hotel room.

Even if you suspected it was true, there’s always a moment of shock when you learn that gossip is not just rumor but rooted in reality. It was right in front of your face all along! As soon as the receptionist said that, I knew the attractive younger woman was involved with the married man. She had definitely been on the trip.

This gossip had real consequences: her reputation, his marriage. (And his reputation.) It was none of my business, but I sent her a polite, non-judgey note to say, “Hey, just FYI, be a little more scrupulous in the future.” I wasn’t scolding her; I believe it’s fine to have an affair. (I mean, not fine, because it causes a lot of pain, but it happens all the time. Regardless, none of my business, and certainly nothing that should come up if it’s not affecting either party’s work.) But if she didn’t want other people to know she was having an affair with a married man, she should be more careful! Ditto with social media: It’s public. People can see who you’re friends with, what posts you “like,” and increasingly they can even see when you’re online. This intersects with the workplace in a way it didn’t in the past: Making your account private doesn’t really help—it’s hard to justify not accepting people you see every day. That means they’re going to know stuff about you.

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I think I’ve established how dysfunctional the Kerry campaign was, here and elsewhere. Well, it’s possible I was a gossip angel during that time period because I knew how it felt to have your personal life dissected behind your back. On the Kerry campaign, everyone was saying my boyfriend was cheating on me. And he was!

The revelation came thanks to a series of technological loopholes. Many of you won’t remember this, but in the BlackBerry era, you used to have to empty your email inbox when you had between four hundred and five hundred messages. You could only accomplish this online, on a desktop. (No wonder nobody’s using them anymore. But I’m still a fan.)