Whoever gossips to you will gossip about you.
                                                — Spanish proverb

Filipinos are notorious when it comes to gossiping or better known as tsismis. For us, it seems that the day is never complete without telling or hearing about the latest tismis. Gatol talaga! Kipling is right that words are the most powerful drug for humans. So when are we gossiping and when are we communicating? What’s a secret and what’s OK to tell?

The common stereotype is that tismis is a woman’s domain – that of a woman with so little cooking in her own life that she carried spicy tidbits on other people’s lives from person to person. With tabloid newspapers, trash talk shows and, yes, the Web, we have now elevated gossip to just another form of communication. And for the most part, it’s a fun and acceptable way to interact with others — as long as the subject is not too close to home (but of course!).

The Filipino community is perhaps next to the Internet as the largest gossipmonger ever created, dispatching and posting the slightest rumor — with the emphasis on speed not veracity. All you need is two people to get it started. Much like the Xerox commercial – keep them talking. Istorya digde, istorya doman - the tsismis all of sudden has its own life! You’d probably like to think that your buddies are not regaling the community with tales of your daughter’s teenage pregnancy or your depleted bank account. But I bet your tolerance is much higher when it comes to discussing so and so’s private life, even when you can hardly claim to be an insider. For most of us, the greater the distance from the object of discussion the larger is the latitude to indulge.

In an intimate relationship, tossing the buzz about others around (i.e., exchanging vital information before it is properly vetted) is a non-issue. The bonds of coupledom have weight and there is a bubble of privacy with air enough for two. Your husband is not going to tell all (kuno!). That is because men file stuff away in a mental locker, while women use the energy of the info to connect and lead to another level of sharing. They will discuss data that is less flattering to themselves and others (“When I dated him he hated black underwear.”), while men are more likely to tell a story about a relationship because it features the storyteller in a good light (“So and so, used to be my girlfriend, etc.”). Men are more likely to embellish with other men than they do with women, including female friends. The logical conclusion to that is women disclose more secrets and gossip with each other. Certainly, men don’t tell all in public – it is just unmanly!

So what distinguishes a secret from simple networking? For juicy updates, insider trading is best done in a very small circle, and relationship proximity gives rights to some and none to others. The husband can have a wider variety of info than the wife would reveal to a casual acquaintance. For example, if her best friend is pregnant and her friend doesn’t want anyone to know yet, she’ll probably tell her partner, but not another friend (dapat kota). Other data is locked down immediately without sharing. If it’s “Under no circumstances are you to reveal the fact that so and so is not the father of my child,” then telling anyone constitutes gossip. It’s because this is NOT your information to share — it belongs to the original owner and is unlikely to ever be common knowledge. But, being human, we do inhuman things like telling everyone about it. Pag sinabing don’t tell anyone, we naturally do. Sanamagan, ipinamamarita! “You did not hear this from me” is the common caveat. Our rationale for engaging in tsismis is that a pregnant belly will become apparent to all before long anyway, so what the heck!
The motivation of the information exchange is a good dividing line for the difference between benign gossip and malignant gossip. The bad stuff is usually reserved for chatting about people you dislike — those whose downfall would be applauded. Crab, talaga! In relationships, there is often collusion as to who is the bad guy and what is tolerable babble about him/her. Relaxing in a warm bubble bath of bonding and blabber is what connects intimate partners. Good gossip is sharing, at least in that context.

It is the nature of humans to want to connect — we’re social animals and revel in belonging. To get the inside track may involve the use of information currency — “Maybe that’s what you think — but I know what happened.” There is also the theory of triangular communication — that we drift into talking about a third party when we get together with our peers, rather than talking about our own relationship. At some point, the gossip exchange becomes uncomfortable. It reaches critical mass and we move along to incorporate another person in the communication pattern — sometimes the one we were talking about! Hanep, ano?

There is sometimes an uncomfortable feeling left behind after someone delivers private third-party information. That is possibly because we realize we may be next on the hit list. Networking the nookie news is always the least flattering but the most seductive to turn away from. We may find ourselves trading info like Pokemon cards and wishing we had remained quiet. There is always a bump and a pop when we take something from our inner lives and make it public. When we do this to someone else without their permission, we are wrong. The best barometer is the feeling that happens after revealing the goods. Getting a troubled friend help will feel good. It won’t create the lumpy feeling that comes after announcing a colleague’s secret sexual orientation. One is social conscience; the other is speculation or improper use of a confidence.

The only certainty here is that rumor, fantasy and fact-passing are here to stay. People who lack substance in their own lives will still “borrow” other people’s news to peddle. It is what we rely on for entertainment — and what fuels our pseudo-connections to people we barely know.

By the way, those horrid rumors you’ve heard about me are totally untrue.