“Yes, we all love celebrity gossip. But is it really as harmless as we think?”

When the world outside is burning, you can count on one thing to unite us: celebrity gossip.

The past week has seen the internet set ablaze with memes, punchy jokes, hot takes and articles a-plenty flavoured by Beckham-branded family chaos. The very public fallout between the eldest son, Brooklyn, and Victoria and David Beckham has sent us all into a dither of gossip-fuelled speculation over one of the most famous families on the planet.

And who could blame us for sprinting to Brooklyn’s stories, screenshotting them and immediately posting them in our group chats alongside our thoughts and theories as to what’s really happening? The careful curation of mystique and personality is rarely shattered so spectacularly, and when someone like Brooklyn presses the big red button on their family’s reputation, we can’t help but reach for the popcorn, tune in and chime in.

Not convinced? Look at what happened when Ashley Tisdale published her article in The Cut about her ‘toxic mum group’. Scandalous. Sensational. Irresistible. How could we not want to know what’s going on there? It has the makings of a great story: intrigue, complex interpersonal dynamics, conflict and drama. Our cups runeth over with non-world-ending or depression-inducing events to talk about. And it is sorely needed. Moments like these offer us a means to escape the usually inescapable onslaught of very serious stuff happening in the world around us.

It’s a reprieve, a moment to catch our breath and lose it laughing again. But why are we so obsessed with talking about others? 

Gossip is a consequence of our evolution

As humans, we can’t help but be drawn in by the mystery of what goes on behind closed doors. Particularly, the closed doors of the rich and famous, be they celebrities or royalty. Usually, the inner circles of their lives are inaccessible and tremendously private. So when something shatters the carefully maintained veneer of celebrity perfection, we can’t help but be comforted, amused and shocked by their fallible humanity.

Our obsession with celebrity gossip isn’t because we’re frivolous or unintelligent. Neither is it a particularly gendered mode of speech, as we’ve been led to believe. Rather, celebrity gossip heightens a very human aspect of our species. We are social creatures with a penchant for tending to and talking about our interpersonal bonds.

In his book Grooming, Gossip And The Evolution Of Language, Professor Robin Dunbar tells us that around two-thirds of our conversations are taken up with “matters of social import”. Our world, he says, is “cocooned in the interests and minutiae of everyday life”, much like that of our hairier, more distant relatives, the apes.

Dunbar tells us that gossip is a consequence of our evolution as higher-thinking primates with a huge neocortex, who are capable of keeping track of  “what’s going on with whom”, manipulating relationships, soothing and caring for others, and even exacerbating social tensions. It is woven into the very fabric of our nature to want to know the latest news and talk about it.

We are also story-driven beings. We’ve long been keepers of oral histories, folklore and fairy tales. And what is celebrity gossip but an opportunity to sit around the proverbial campfire and listen to cautionary tales (think Britney Spears, Paris Hilton and Lindsey Lohan of the 2000s), incredulous plot twists (see: 2024’s #Scandoval or the arrest of Jen Shah from The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City in 2021) and triumphant moments in popular culture.

Celebrity gossip is also a kind of cultural chit-chat that reflects public sentiment, and it tells us a lot about the attitudes of our world. Sometimes, those attitudes aren’t so innocuous.

But what about the consequences?

For the most part, celebrity gossip is pretty harmless. It’s tittle-tattle at the workplace water cooler or a fun topic up for discussion in the group chat. Localised in this way, its harms aren’t felt so keenly by its subjects and entertain us endlessly. However, with people taking to social media to add their two cents, the permanency of their words gives rise to gossip’s darker side.

Internet pile-ons, taking the joke too far and tearing up reputations with malicious intent are the predilection of online trolls who use gossip maliciously. In this context, gossip permits the absurdity of malicious gossip by inviting us to participate in something we all agree might not be true, but could be. It creates fertile ground for conspiracy theories to bloom, as they are fertilised by social media platforms’ lack of fair content moderation. Add to that an algorithm with gender-based biases, AI-moderated content without the intelligence to understand nuance and monetary rewards for the most inflammatory content, and you have a recipe for disaster that impacts women online in a unique way. Women who end up discredited, harmed and villainised.

In her most recent book, The New Age Of Sexism, author and activist Laura Bates says that “women simply have a different experience of technology than men do”. Reporting that nearly nine in 10 women say they restrict their online activity in some way as a result of online violence, Bates adds that half of women say the internet is not a safe place to share thoughts.

We don’t need to go far in our digital history to find examples of how this pattern impacts celebrity and non-celebrity women. Look at the bot-powered celebrity gossip surrounding Amber Heard during her very public trial in Virginia, which had a non-sequestered jury. A similar pattern might be observed in the recent trial of Sean ‘Diddy’ Coombs, whose jury maintained access to the outside world and torrents of misinformation surrounding the case.

Gossip has the power to sway public opinion on everything from celebrities to politics. It’s easy to get carried away when we’re having too much fun retelling our stories to sometimes remember that, at the heart of them, is a very real person. A person who, ultimately, could read what you post online and be deeply impacted – whatever your intent and however distant that reality seems.

As I write this, various reports are competing for the top spot on Google to tell us that this whole ordeal has left Victoria Beckham ‘on the floor in pieces’. This should serve as a reminder to us all that, while there’s nothing inherently wrong with engaging in a bit of celebrity gossip, we’d do well to think before we speak.

Images: Getty