Ethically produced knowledge and learning? Sure thing, don’t know about the ethics though, a production, yes. Stand point to gossip is that it is all around, unavoidable as it seems. Why people do it? It obviously plays the essential part of entertaining as everyday soap without TV. Why do you think even though we know it is morally wrong and there is no justification to gossip people find gossip appealing? It brings together similar minded jackasses and separates those who can be discussed about. Gossip sure has a place in society, but why through doing harm we look for something interesting, excitement and shock value. Good and nice are not enough, boring maybe? We need the shock, danger, exposure, element of forbidden in digging other people’s lives and to seek humiliation on others, shame of those who are in the spotlight? Obviously, why else bad talk would flourish to the extent it does. Gossiping is a major seller of goods and magazines making celebrities. It is an emotional boost of either wanting what that other fabulous person has or loathing and hating someone to exclude them, make them feel bad about themselves. I see it merely as public expression of emotions and desires, which has very little to do with reason. Gossip is psychological warfare, violence and shows the ugly side of people, of those who gossip. getting things out of proportion, out of context, false and to make the talker look better than the one who is talked about. It is much a moral issue in which those who make gossip think have morals on their side, have higher morals than and know what is morally right. Gossiping people do not see anything wrong in their behavior until they are caught. It is a mental assault to team against someone, cruel, bullying, hurtful and ruthless. It does not stop until it is stopped.
If I look at the phenomenon of word getting around, it is irreversible and damaging. Gossip is targeting with a purpose, practical with a specific meaning. In that way it is very social, needs relations and skills to spread. If you really don’t know what you are talking about, why don’t you keep your fucking mouth shut. If your only purpose is to harm those you for some reason do not like, you have got some serious issues that need tending.
http://www.apa.org/science/about/psa/2005/04/gossip.aspx ”For example, it has been theorized that gossip played a fundamental role in the evolution of human intelligence and social life (Dunbar, 2004; Davis & McLeod, 2003) and that it continues to play an active role in cultural learning (Baumeister, Zhang, & Vohs, 2004) and as a source of social comparison information (Suls, 1977; Wert & Salovey, 2004a). To be sure, it is often noted that rumor and gossip can also be undeniably aversive and problematic-currently illustrated, for example, in the way that rumor and gossip have generated resistance to medical efforts to deal with HIV and AIDS (e.g., Smith, Lucas, & Latkin, 1999; Stadler, 2003).”
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