Silvia Federeci, marxist feminist, philosopher, researcher and occasional controversial figure in the feminist movement, wrote about the etymology of the word gossip. Gossip comes from the old English godsibb (“God” and “a relative” or “a sponsor”) and it was, in its origins, a word to describe a godparent. Over time, the word evolved to describe female friends who would attend a childbirth, friends who were considered to be, in a way, godmothers. Federeci points that, somewhere around the end of the Middle Ages, the term was turned against women to signify idle conversation (which would happen a lot during the hours of labour) and from there the narrative spins to turn gossip into the act of idle chatting, removing the female friendship aspect of it. It colored the word with negative connotation. It still carried associations with groups of women chatting away, but this time, as a bad thing. Gossiping became a sin.

Whatever paths the word went through over the centuries hardly change an indisputable fact: gossiping feels good. It’s fulfilling, elating, interesting. It captures attention. It keeps people engaged. Gossiping is telling stories, passing tales of survival, with the caveat that many times the subject of such tale is not aware their story is being passed down to others.

But what, pray be, is GOOD gossip? The juicy gossip, the type that gets a slack-jawed reaction that writes incredulity all over faces. There’s much to be said about them; the structure, the themes, the context that defines gossip and separates it from straightforward storytelling, the morality of it (which I will not be touching upon–think of this as a thought experiment, an attempt to observe a topic so often demonized through a different set of lens). So let me offer a non-exhaustive theory, formulated in the depths of my brain while working on an upcoming cool project, as to what are the tenets of good gossip.

Gossip can be about anything or anyone. While trying to condense mine and some of my friends’ understanding of gossip, I quickly understood this was a far too extensive topic. Oftentimes it is the theme itself that “makes” the chisme. However, if you look closely, there are patterns surfacing. Patterns I will call here Elements.

Good gossip consists, then, of at least one of the following thematic elements. We’ll break them down in detail.

Secrets make for excellent gossip. The point here is that to at least one of the people involved in the conversation, the central information of the gossip was unknown; a secret. It might be the confirmation of an open secret, too, something someone might have speculated on for a while, and now is sure to be true.

Secrets tickle our very human curiosity. Despite our best attempts to mind our individual lives, we are a communal species. We have an urge and an instinct to be nosy and get up into each other’s business. It’s a form of caring, like picking lice from each other’s hairy backs. You know, monkey business.

Secrets are often kept because the action or information made secret is either considered immoral, illegal or unethical. Calling back to that primary urge to tell stories as a means of sharing survival knowledge, the act of uncovering what’s considered wrong is a way to protect each other–it’s also a way to enforce order under arbitrary rules, so not every secret-breaking is really a positive act. But again, we’re not judging gossip through any morality lens.

Ah, now here is something that makes for shock value–learning someone or something is the opposite of what you thought they were. A person who poses as good but did a bad thing; a terrible situation that was, on another perspective, not that bad.

Learning of a contradiction makes us question our own perception of the world around us, of our judgement of people’s character. It’s connected to the feeling of uncovering a secret. A contradiction is, to the person who uncovers it, a lie.

To live in society, we agree to unspoken societal rules that, for one, limit our freedom to act according to our animal or primal instincts, but too allow us to live in relative harmony with each other. There are many possible models of society, most essentially flawed as the pool of means to harm one another grows exponentially with technological advancement. But the need to regulate remains, and that as in a collective drive, not as an individual personality trait. If I follow the rules, so must you. Ergo if you contradict yourself, you are in the wrong.

Nothing is more impressive than the tenacity and sheer audacity of humans. But this type of audacity–the type that, in male anatomy, takes up the space that would be occupied by the uterus–turns people bold. It makes them raise hell, betray, cheat, act crazy, pick fights, do the most absurd and unethical things. Audacity often goes hand-in-hand with contradiction, but good gossip can be just about the absolute boldness of a person.

What’s better than good gossip? The follow-up to good gossip.

That “there’s more”, an update, consequences happening, or simply catching up on the lives of people you haven’t heard of for a very long time can feel elating. I often tell my friends I like “third-person gossip”, news about people I have absolutely nothing to do with and that therefore will have zero impact in my life or in those of anyone around me. Harmless storytelling that involves characters who might as well be fictional.

Which leads me to another important aspect of gossip that makes it so enthralling: that it is real. It’s about real, flesh-and-blood individuals who are flawed and make mistakes and are wrong and immoral and sometimes act downright insane (more often than not, sanity is defined by how much one can stick to the unspoken rules).

Gossip lives in the fictionalization of real individuals. You can switch names, place the characters in a different setting, but the story will remain real; it happened to someone, or to many someones, even if it is absurd or impossible. Even if the gossip is embellished a little to provide for better storytelling.

We are creatures of story. We yearn for the tea.