I read a great article about the “need” for celebrity gossip today, which I actually agree with. The concept of “celebrity gossip as evolutionary skill set”, I have to credit Michael Shermer with, but it seems to fit.
From the Vancouver Sun:
My, we do love our celebrities. We love to hear about them and talk about them, whether it’s in the elevator on the way up to the office or, as evidenced by the above, on the Internet.
Who can resist, for instance, perezhilton.com, even though the world’s most famous celebrity blogger is no writer and doodles rude things on photos of his subjects. No matter, he’s a one-man plugged-in Hollywood grapevine and, next to the pages of Star and National Enquirer and US Weekly, the go-to rumour monger, reportedly logging close to four million web hits a day.
Not that any of us would admit to a gossip addiction, which is really too bad, because it turns out it’s just human nature, just part of our DNA, to dig for dirt on Paris and Lindsay and Angelina.
In fact, in an article in the current issue of Scientific American Mind titled Can Gossip Be Good?, American psychology professor Frank McAndrew contends that gossip was not only a pervasive prehistoric pastime, but humans have been hardwired for thousands of years to talk about others.
And, get this, it’s good for us.
Gossip, in fact, was all the rage in the Stone Age, when humans lived in small enclaves, insulated against the cold harsh outside world and rarely exposed to strangers.
Their personal proclivities and peccadillos were openly discussed, part of the bond that held the band together and cemented an individual’s social importance and familial attachment. The more you knew about the guy sleeping next to you in the cave, the safer and more knowledgeable and accepted you were.
The science of gossip goes something like this: Life is about adapting, and the more information we have about a situation and the people around us, the more successful we will be in dealing with that situation, and the relationships that are important to it.
It’s natural selection at its finest: Gossip leads to good choices.
Fast forward a few eons and the irony is that we’re now a planet with nearly seven billion people and, yet, more and more of us in the modern world are living alone, or in much smaller groups than our ancestors did.
We still gossip, but it’s taken a turn.
For many homo sapiens, “family” today is a cabal of movie stars and pop singers, television actors and fashion models, public figures and reality show winners, the celebrities we have come to know intimately through television and the Internet and the media, so much so that these people have become our clan.
And, just like in the old days, getting to know them and gossiping about them keeps us connected, something we need as humans, and so we seek and share the latest on Jennifer Aniston’s love life, Mel Gibson’s drinking problem, Britney Spears’s custody battles and Hugh Jackman’s anointment as Sexiest Man Alive.
Unlike the Neanderthals, though, we are investing in the lives of perfect strangers, and that comes with a down side.
The experts will tell you that we are raising a generation that looks to these strangers, about whom they know so much, as role models, especially for their cues about social behaviour and life strategies, like they once would have relied upon a wise elder in the tribe.
It’s why television shows like The Hills, Gossip Girl and Desperate Housewives are ratings giants, and influence the way millions of us act and talk and dress, and why People magazine sells nearly four million copies a week.
Gossip can also be nasty, self-serving and even exploitive, especially in a work environment or wherever we might encounter potential rivals.
And, of course, familiarity can breed contempt, when rumour’s intent is nothing more than the twisted pleasure in the misfortune of others.
That said, gossip has long performed a useful function as an essential link in human development, says McAndrew.
His suggestion is that instead of looking at gossip as a character flaw, perhaps we should be more charitable with our addiction, and consider it an evolutionary social skill.
Something to talk about over the water cooler, to be sure.
