Gossip: the surprising power of talking behind people’s backs

A look into how spilling tea can sometimes brew the strongest of friendships

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“What happened to his wife? Did they get divorced?” asked my new friend Ishrat, squinting at her phone like she was trying to spot a missing earring in a wedding photo.

“I don’t know, but I don’t see her photos on his social media anymore,” I replied.

We were hanging out in a group on our third or fourth day of knowing each other, and as we exchanged Instagram details, we found a mutual friend.

It’s one of those friends I like to call a distant friend, twice removed. Ishrat went to tuition classes with him when they were in grade 8, I knew him from a short volunteering gig I did to beef up my profile before university applications.

It’s obvious we didn’t stay in touch, but in this day and age of social media, you don’t have to speak every day to know what’s going on in a person’s life.

So even though the last time I saw him was in the spring of 2017, I knew all about his breakup from his long-term girlfriend, his promotion, and his wedding.

Which is why, as the string of happy couple photos suddenly ran out, both Ishrat and I were wondering if the same thing had happened to their marriage.

“Why don’t they just announce the divorce if it actually happened?” I asked. “Celebrities make it so much easier. They do it in three lines, with a heart emoji, saving me hours of sleuthing.”

Okay, the last bit was a lie, I admit. I’d rather go through five years’ worth of social media posts to analyse everything about a person I don’t even know that well.

Before you judge me for being a nosy auntie in a Gen-Z body (which I don’t even deny being), gossiping has long been a social currency, particularly when bonding with a new acquaintance.

These days, we just call it “spilling tea,” but really, it’s the same old habit dressed up in a cuter phrase.

Gossiping has been a recurring element in pop culture, the most iconic instance being Regina George’s “cool mom” in Mean Girls, and her search for the 411.

While the movie portrays “hot gossip” as a vile and superficial part of high school bullying, research shows it can be a more intrinsic part of our lives than we thought.

A 2025 study at the Illinois State University examined gossip through the “Social Exchange Theory”, which is built on the premise that human relationships are often built on the proportions of cost and benefit of keeping the relationship afloat. And gossip serves as an important currency in that cost-benefit analysis.

That hit home when Ishrat and I moved from polite small-talk to full conspiracy theory in under a week. When I met Ishrat, I pegged her as a haughty airhead who spent her days getting her hair dyed or hunching over new outfit designs. According to Ishrat, she thought I was an insufferable hoity-toity know-it-all who takes herself way too seriously.

But ever since we started gossiping, we found that our thoughts align in more ways than one. And that is exactly the point of this research, which found that gossiping was not only a form of “entertainment”, but it also brings people together based on their shared preferences, frustrations, and values, building a stronger bond.

Workplaces thrive when staff gossip, says a 2025 article from Medical Teacher, which shows that gossip helped new resident doctors figure out what is expected of them, and build trust between coworkers, which is essential in a fast-paced industry like medicine.

And let’s not forget the safety feature. Remember the times you joked about your creepy colleague, or that weird classmate? Gossip like this allows peers to warn each other about the reputation of others, allowing the listener to make an informed decision to steer clear of someone.

Ishrat and I never did find the answer to our original question, but by then it hardly mattered. We’d moved on from idle speculation about a mutual friend’s marriage to sharing our real thoughts, ambitions, and quiet longings.

In a way, we stand as proof that gossip, while often dismissed as shallow, can be the spark that lights up something deeper. It gives you an entry point, a surface-level exchange that gradually opens windows into your personality, allowing the other person to glimpse inside. And sometimes, through that glimpse, a genuine friendship begins.