I’m Dying For Some Hot Goss

We’re in a gossip drought, and everyone is so, so thirsty.

I saw this tweet the other day from comedian and writer Ali Barthwell, and I have never related to anything more acutely:

Preach, Ali.

After almost a year of living in pandemia, I find myself craving other people’s minor dramas like a plant craves sunlight. Almost as much as I want to eat inside a restaurant or linger in a coffeeshop, I want to bask in the heat of someone else’s embarrassments, arguments, or romantic misfires.

I want to hear about other people’s problems, so I can stop–for one blessed second–obsessing about my own.

Remote work, the removal of forced workplace fun, and the inability to gather at bars, parties, lunches, brunches, and game nights have deprived us of the fertile soil in which gossip can grow. We can’t stand around the K-Cup machine on Friday morning discussing what went down at Thursday night’s accounting department karaoke night, because there are no accounting department karaoke nights. There are no karaoke nights at all.

Gossip, like group singalongs, is in short supply, and I miss it so much.

Now I’m not talking about the kind of deeply harmful, trust-eroding gossip that Brené Brown calls “common enemy intimacy.” Brown says, “We share things that are…