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AHS JOURNALISM GOLD SPONSOR

Harmless Gossip? – GUEST OPINION

Senior Taylor Monson
By Taylor Monson

Harmless Gossip?

I know a girl who used to walk through the school with a smile and confidence.  Her life seemed almost perfect.  Suddenly she changed.  Depression hid inside her and tore apart every happy thought.  She cut herself every day after school.  She attempted suicide on multiple occasions.  Why could such horrible things happen to a happy teenager?  Gossip plagued her life.  Whispering through every hallway, the rumors destroyed her life.

From the outside, gossip looks like harmless chatter.  Exchanging a few juicy rumors about the girl in second period and an exaggerated story from last weekend’s party seem like popularity boosters.  That is, until the gossip is about you.  Gossip rips a teenager up inside while it shreds self-confidence and poisons our schools.  These “secrets” are a form of bullying and the cause of fighting, arguments, and in extreme cases, school shootings.

The truth is, gossip never remains a secret.  Gossip twists and turns from teller to listener until the stretched story reaches the ears of its subject.  In the end, the “secret” always finds its way back to those whom the gossip is about.  Gossip is like a game of telephone.  The original story weaves its way through a group of people as they add their own “spin” to it.  The story is obscured and twisted until its original content is nonexistent.  This is how a rumor is born, and when this happens, the real damage occurs.

For example, when a boy hears a rumor about himself, he will deny the false information.  However, the damage is done.  Not only is the whole school buzzing with the new scandal, but the boy feels as if his world is collapsing.  He may smile and shrug it off as if the rumor does not affect him, but inside he feels as if he wants to die.  Embarrassment and shame swallow his thoughts as he tries to finish the day.  Although a school is considered a “safe zone,” gossip still creeps in to ruin his day.

Here lies a key issue.  How safe are the schools?  Teachers often listen to students’ gossip-filled conversations, yet keep their mouths shut.  Some teachers even gossip with students by sharing information about ineligible basketball players or students spending days in in-school suspension.  When teachers gossip, it gives a student the idea that she is allowed to gossip as well.  When this happens, gossip grows.

As gossip grows, so do the urges to settle disputes.  Confrontations occur and hallway fights distract other students from the learning environment.  I’ve witnessed fights in the hallways because of rumors.  The gossip turns into violence and can hurt bystanders as well.  During my sophomore year, I was gathering books from my locker when a fight broke out to the right of me.  A crowd encircled the boys, and the two began to shove each other.  I was pushed into my locker.  Gossip created a fight that not only hurt the two boys, but also other students in the school.

Gossip not only targets enemies, but friends as well.  The scandals create issues between even the best of friends.  Initially, gossip may be something that brings friends together.  People love telling each other stories, and often these gossip filled stories are the buds of new friendships.  Unfortunately, gossip is often the  thing that then tears friendships apart.  I watched two of my best friends end their friendship over a series of texts of gossip they started about each other.  The untrue information found its way back to both of them. Rather than settle the dispute, the girls fought with each other and ended their friendship.  The desire to learn and spread  new gossip is often deadly.

Human nature gives us the urge and desire to listen and feed off of gossip.  We’ve all listened to gossip before and even shared our own factless knowledge.  That’s what makes gossip so infectious.  Every person loves to listen to news, especially when that news is bad.  Hearing gossip about others makes us feel like our own lives aren’t as bad.  Listening to someone else’s drama may even make us feel better about ourselves.  But there’s the key problem.  While making yourself feel better, your are terrorizing the life of another.

Gossip remains the root of many problems.  Bullying and hallway fights are usually direct results of the ugly gossip plaguing our schools.  Gossip is the silent killer of happiness in schools.  No one deserves to be tortured and bullied at school.  To solve the problem of these ugly secrets, we must all stop feeding the gossip monster inside us.

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  • G

    Gage EdenFeb 18, 2011 at 12:04 pm

    This is 100% true, and although I’m often unintentionally guilty, it’s the exact reason why I feel that the human race has failed. We as humans appear to willing to emotionally/pyschologically murder someone to get social acceptance. Yet nobody seems to notice or care about the effect. “We try not to ponder the fact that our detestable actions will forever last” -Travis Ryan.

    Thought I’d put in my two cents.

    Reply
  • T

    Tyler HoveyFeb 15, 2011 at 8:45 am

    this is true. gossip hurts. good job taylor

    Reply
  • M

    Mr. HackmanFeb 4, 2011 at 12:39 pm

    Taylor you did one amazing job on this piece. It may be one person’s opinion, but it holds true for many, and that is what people want to hear and read about.

    Reply