It might be no surprise to you, but we do love gossip around here at the sneer campaign. The Goss. The Juicy G. I feel like a significant portion of an exceptionally good day for all of us Sneerists and Junior Sneerists consists of the delicious exchange of gossip, but I am sure that we are not much different from the average friend group. How could we be? I state here with authority that we love it, we all love it. We love the smell and taste of gossip. We love the vitamins and nutrients. We love it we love it.

Gossip Among Friends is my 24 hour news station of choice. Morsels of information, tidbits of speculation, maybe a dash or two of stretched truths: they are valuable bites that my friends, acquaintances, and I barter and trade with. We share gossip because we have been taught to share. We use gossip as currency because we have been taught that time is money and another day is another dollar — the goss included.

There is certainly a section of society that believes the love of gossip to be a vice, a social sin. We have all encountered such people. Maybe you, individual reader, are one such person! But I have always interpreted that song and dance to be a little too much denial. I figure those people are merely broadcasting that they have realized that they don’t want to dish it out because they know that they can’t take it. That is some admirable self awareness, I guess. But where they go wrong is when they conclude that it means everyone is a hypocrite because, according to their reasoning, NO ONE can take it. I can speculate wildly about their reasons and misbegotten conclusions. In fact, I love to.

Everyone involved in those sorts of conclusions are being too serious. Come on. Let the rest of us have our fun. Our sport. Our sweet little hobby.

Gossiping among friends and neighbors offers the thrill of a roller coaster ride as your opinion is slammed back and forth. You can start with one side of the story and then inevitably hear another side. Take in all of the commentary, editorial pieces, and dark whispers of potential root causes. Take it all in until you are dizzy with information, so much information and you don’t even know how much is factual — and also maybe it doesn’t even matter.

You can choose sides willy-nilly knowing that you aren’t actually choosing sides. Maybe the people at the center of the storm wouldn’t know that you’re being cavalier. Maybe their loved ones would take offense that their drama has become a spectator sport. In the end, we know that it doesn’t matter who is right or wrong, because everyone is always wrong somehow, ourselves included. The subjects are the only ones that lose — the rest of us win with entertainment. Anyway, everything is fleeting. Temporary.

Eat up that false sense of moral superiority. Devour it. Relish it. We all know that things are clearer from the outside, and inside the maelstrom is confusing and cloudy. But disregard that fact — you and your friends currently know better than those hapless dramatic figures and no one can judge you for anything you’re thinking or saying amongst pals. If they try to do so, if they are trying to shame you or anyone else having a good laugh at the expense of others, then they are a killjoy, and will be treated as such until they come back around to their senses.

The Joys of Gossipy Chitty Chat:

• Lose hours, maybe even days as you share details again and again with your friends.
• Engage in friendly debate as you discuss pros and cons, support and detraction.
• Be Sherlock Holmes as you unearth facts, read everything about the victims, notice things that may or may not have anything to do with the matter at hand.
• A foxhunt as you stream across the countryside, engaged in a disgusting blood sport.
• A witch hunt if ever it is a case involving the wicked or the wrong.

And at the end of the day, you can walk away from variously ruined lives of these people you know or people you’ve never met, with only a passing worry that some day it might be your turn.

That is unless you follow my guide on being more mysterious. Then, the gossip that swirls around you can feed you, too.