The good gossip: What meme culture, side-eyes, and soft launches really reveal

Everyone gossips. To bond, to pass time, or just because they can. A 2019 study found that the average person spends nearly an hour a day talking about others. In 2025, that’s just foreplay.

Gossip isn’t just for teenage girls in high schools or to discuss reruns of Gossip Girl (2007-2012). Even Blake Lively’s caught in it again, for the recent drama around the film It Ends With Us (2024). That’s nearly two decades after she played the internet’s favourite rich girl with secrets. From Mean Girls(2004) to Scoop (2024), pop culture has always understood the chaos and consequence of rumour mongering.

Yet, gossip has never felt more unserious; it’s never held more power either. When Elon Musk and Donald J. Trump clashed online earlier this year, the phrase heard all around the world was “the girls are fighting”. Memes and Instagram reels—Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez quoted it too—barely hiding a grin. Borrowed from Black queer internet culture, the phrase turned global politics into reality TV. It turned a global power feud into Bravo-level drama. That’s gossip’s real power—it entertains, exposes, and makes the powerful squirm. 

“Gossip is a fluid concept. You can’t tell when it’s just scandalous and when it’s the truth,” says sociologist Shambhobi Bagchi. “‘Gossip’ is a historically maligned word; it’s only human for interest in it to grow, making it a sort of guilty pleasure,” adds Bagchi.

“There’s also a joy or thrill that people get when they come to a conclusion by thinking something through, even though they might know the person the information is about,” says content creator Rida Tharana. “Sharing ‘insider’ details creates a sense of belonging. When it’s about mutual acquaintances, it reinforces trust and solidarity, like a low-stakes ritual that weaves social fabric. Psychologically, gossip can trigger endorphin release and transient dopamine spikes, reducing stress and satisfying the curiosity instinct,” says Dr Chandni Tugnait, psychotherapist and founder-director, Gateway of Healing.

A history of gossip in India 

While most people take a keen interest in the happenings of the lives of other people, some, like Malini Agarwal a.k.a Miss Malini, had built a community around it since 2008 with her then popular blog. “In India, gossip is like a love language. Gossiping is a bonding style and how people communicate—it’s shared conversation that doesn’t have to be bad because it’s a way to be intimate within a group of friends, something that runs culturally deep in India,” says Agarwal. 

Historically, this practice of sharing any sort of information under the radar, has also emerged from a place of necessity. For certain marginalised groups, gossip has been both a mode of resistance as well as a way of channeling information. “In 18th-century India, upper caste women in states like Bengal were not allowed to leave the household. The only time they could then share their troubles was while doing chores,” says Bagchi. Plus, that’s also how freedom fighters exchanged information and discussed strategy during the fight for India’s independence from colonial rule. “Of course, that was not tagged as ‘gossip’ because it involved men too. It’s only when those who aren’t in power—which has historically been women—do it, and those in power—in this case, men—don’t have access to the information being passed, that it’s termed as ‘gossip,’ giving it a negative connotation,” says Bagchi.

Is it just women who gossip? Unpacking the stereotype

A research paper by Sudarshana Ganguly from February 2022 found that towards the end of the 16th century, gossiping in India started to become associated with negativity. “The change came along with the strengthening of patriarchal forces and mechanisms, especially in the sphere of the family and the exclusion of women from public activities. Coupled with the lack of means of livelihood for women, they began to be confined more and more to their homes, being demanded of ultimate obedience and servitude to their husbands,” it adds. Gradually, the context of the word ‘gossip’ began to change entirely to accommodate more sinister intentions.

“Through the centuries, the word was weaponised even more against women—to accuse them of spinning tales, and of turning against one another instead of forming companionship. Pop culture portrayals in the 20th century and early 21st century, of ‘bitchy’ girls gossiping were largely influenced by such developments as well,” the study states. 

And so, women were the key subject of gossip for the longest time. What women do, eat, wear, and who they date, are common subjects of chatter. “We’re still living in a patriarchal society, and people are more interested in talking about a girl or a woman’s life, versus a man’s. Also, beyond a point, successful women intimidate people, and the only way to bring them down is by [indulging in] negative conversations with peers, which perhaps gives people some satisfaction?” says Kochi-based actor and creator Priya Varrier, 25, who saw the worst side of gossip on the internet after being trolled by the common man as well as traditionalists in power for a wink onscreen that went viral. Varrier, then 18, became the most searched person in India, thanks to the winking scene from her film Oru Adaar Love. It also sparked rumours that she has “too much attitude” and “charges a lot of money” for films, repercussions of which she is facing even seven years hence. 

How gossip in India has evolved from tabloids to Instagram 

Talk isn’t cheap. Its commodification through the years, with what began as picking up a copy of tabloids or entertainment magazines like Stardust or Filmfare to read about celebrities as a means to pass time, has now gone online with Instagram pages including Diet Prada and Diet Sabya. 

Tabloids introduced the concept of tongue-in-cheek pieces of information. “It wasn’t unusual for a word or two a celebrity had said to be taken out of context, only to be used as a catchy headline just to get people’s attention. Even then, the rumours were based on facts. Today, what online platforms like Diet Sabya do isn’t harmful—they share a lot of constructive criticism as well, because they feel people can do better. Plus, they are backing their statements with facts,” says Mandvi Sharma, founder-CEO of Tree-Shul Media Solutions, who started her career with the now-shuttered tabloid, Mail Today. However, when launched in 2018, Diet Sabya was known for its sharp-tongued, scathing commentary on celebrities and the fashion world.

Gossip sells. “The proof is the fact that every Gen Z who uses social media in India today knows who actor Justin Baldoni is. Not because they watched him in his movie but because of his recent controversy with co-star Blake Lively. And people got really invested in it,” adds Sharma. Actor and podcast host Naina Bhan has noticed it is the podcast format that fares the best, as listeners write in gossip anonymously. “Gossip has always been something that takes the pressure off of having heavy conversations. It doesn’t require you to read up or prepare, but can also just be sharing of life experiences,” points out Bhan. 

With social media, people have only gotten more invested in the lives of famous people. So, if a famous personality has experienced heartbreak, it isn’t theirs alone. “Today, it’s not about who is dating whom but who is problematic and why. Which is why people got invested in the love triangle of [Bollywood actors] Ananya Panday, Karthik Aryan, and Sara Ali Khan. Gossiping isn’t passive entertainment anymore; it’s weaponised because famous people are brands today,” says Agarwal, who finds audiences, too, demand honesty while creating memes real-time, given their front-row seat to whatever is happening.

Can gossip be trusted? When word of mouth becomes credible

An interest that drives engagement on social media is currency to be capitalised on in 2025. Today, online engagement itself translates to earnings, as that’s how paid partnerships or deals with brands materialise. “Gossip is important for content and is crucial for people to reach your social media page. That’s why paparazzi pages are doing very well globally too. But to sustain, gossip platforms need to be credible,” says Viral Bhayani, who has been covering celebrity news via his Instagram page since 2015. “Everyone will try to use such platforms to get popular—people, brands, corporates—and plant stories. But the point is to present both sides of what transpired. Also, because Instagram is vigilant about violations and will suspend your page if it detects ‘hate speech,’” says Bhayani. The issue with rumours is that people treat what the first person has to say about any given topic as the gospel truth, instead of depending on facts, points out Sharma. 

Gossip as social currency in Indian pop culture 

Voyeuristic behaviour makes people forget their own worries as they sit judging others. Shows such as Bigg Boss and the upcoming Traitors thrive on gossip. “You have people fighting onscreen and viewers watching at home, taking sides. But you can’t have people fighting with each other on the streets like they do on these shows,” says Sharma. 

Technology has changed how interpersonal social cues via gossip work. Twenty years ago, the concept of someone seeing your story post-midnight and being curious about you didn’t exist. “But if someone accidentally double-taps and likes a picture from years ago while stalking your profile, it counts as gossiping today,” says Bhan, adding that the kind of gossip a person consumes is telling: You get to know the other person and if you would like to engage with them or not. It’s also a social cue to what needs to be kept a secret or if one will be a pariah. “And that also helps you find your place in a group instead of feeling isolated,” says Bhan. 

Gossip makes the social rules, even offering one social currency and validation. “People like other people’s drama because they think they would never do whatever the person being gossiped about did, and hence feel superior to them. Or they would relate with them. So, it is social capital when someone says they knew something before everyone else did. Gossiping is group therapy for an audience that is ‘eme-fluent,’ and helps people understand boundaries, navigate consent, and flag patterns,” says Agarwal.

There’s also the question of loyalty—loyalty to the person being discussed means refusing to amplify rumours while loyalty to the one gossiping means encouraging negative talk. Tugnait explains, “Your responsibility is to protect the absent party when the talk gets malicious, either by challenging the narrative or by exiting the conversation.”

Is gossip always harmful—or can it really help?

Today, gossip acts as a soft power that is a storytelling mechanism which leads to the building of a community. “There are plenty of people saying good things about others. It’s time to use gossiping to build people up. Gossip normalises people breaking up and still being proud of each other, like Deepika Padukone and Ranbir Kapoor,” says Agarwal.

Today, where word-of-mouth is also accompanied by screenshots, gossip acts like softcore activism—you call out bad behaviour or highlight unheard voices. A 2024 study in the United States found that gossip evolved to help social groups function, by spreading useful information about individual members and encouraging cooperation. The study stated: “Good gossipers are usually pretty popular. Their intel on others makes them desirable company, but they also exercise good judgment in portioning it out. That is how they are able to be so in-the-know. They have a reputation for being discreet; they don’t use it in a reckless, nasty sort of way.”

Here, the intent of the person spreading the information is key: “It could either be to help someone else or just for the sake of saying bad things to spark interest. This decides whether a particular piece of gossip is good, which comes from a place of moral right or wrong,” says Bagchi.

Besides, the idea of sharing information itself becomes a necessity when people are oppressed—minority groups, more often than not. Even Gossip Girl, as revealed at the end of the series, was an outsider, speaking up against the upper class “othering” in a fictitious American high school and society.