Do you consider gossiping a form of bullying?

Introvert said:

I agree that not all gossip is "talking shit" but I see a lot of overlap between venting and bitching. The latter seems to be associated with more petty matters but both are ultimately complaining about something or someone. Like I said in the OP I can think of cases where gossip would be necessary, or seemingly justified now that I think about it further. But in most social contexts it just ends up being a means of making yourself feel better at the expense of someone's reputation and potentially their feelings. Talking behind someone's back is passive aggressive by the way.

That's okay I'm really not trying to out you for your opinion so I hope it doesn't come off that way. A lot of people share your opinion so I feel like I'm speaking to multiple people here. I'm not even saying that I've never gossiped so it's not like I'm excluding myself from these standards.

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I'm so over this gloomy shit. Whatever you said or didn't say isn't worth losing a friend over. People say awful stuff when they're mad and more awful stuff when they think no one will hear. All of you say your sorry. Humbling yourself is a beautiful quality, and it goes a long way. Stop being petty. Yeah, someone said something shitty, get over it. Friended are worth much more. I'm not gonna debate the merits of something so simple anymore.

Not mad. Just being real. ;/

Lucid said:

I'm so over this gloomy muk. Whatever you said or didn't say isn't worth losing a friend over. People say awful stuff when they're mad and more awful stuff when they think no one will hear. All of you say your sorry. Humbling yourself is a beautiful quality, and it goes a long way. Stop being petty. Yeah, someone said something mukty, get over it. Friended are worth much more. I'm not gonna debate the merits of something so simple anymore.

Not mad. Just being real. ;/

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What gloomy shit? Acknowledging gossiping as potential bullying? "Whatever you said or didn't say isn't worth losing a friend over." For the life of me I don't even know what you're referring to here. Yes but being emotional isn't a blanket excuse to say hurtful things or gossip and it's irrelevant to whether or not gossiping is considered bullying or not. "All of you say your sorry." I don't know what you mean by this either. What does being humble have to do with this and how am I being petty? I was only trying to say that negative gossip can be considered bullying. It's easy to say get over it on behalf of someone else. Just because gossip doesn't phase you doesn't mean it isn't bullying nor does it mean it's okay to do it yourself. Now at what point gossip becomes bullying I think is up for debate, which is what I was trying to have. You didn't have to debate this with me but I don't see the need to be so rude or hostile.

I still don't know if we're talking about venting or actaul gossip so...

I get that you don't want to debate anymore but what did you mean by gloomy shit? Were you referring to something I said in this thread or my morbid personality in general? What did you mean by humbling myself and how was I being petty? Offended isn't the right word but I was taken back a bit and I'd like to know what you meant.

maybe it is bullying but i'm not gonna lie and act like i don't take part in it lmao

Moved this on over to The Round Table :)

I'll be using "your" and "you" in here, but take it as generally speaking!

Gossiping is bullying and even venting is bullying if it exceeds a certain point.

For instance, if the gossip or venting begins to create drama, rumors, slanders someone else's name, involves people, it's bullying. Gossip was created to do all of those things, and it always ends up spreading like the plague. Often times gossip involves lies, too. Before you know it, a lot of people collectively believe the same thing/s about you and exclusively because of hearsay. No one knows if it's true for sure, but do they care? Are they going to ask you if it's sincere? Typically no.

Gossip is for people who don't have enough excitement or good times in their lives and, speaking honestly, want to torture other people.

Venting is another story. If you're just expressing your detest about someone to another person (maybe a few?) and letting off steam, no harm done. But if those words begin to spread to many people who become involved, whether it's from the source or not, then it becomes a problem. That's spreading slander about someone else, and only the source and the person involved actually know what's up. If simple venting reaches this point and suddenly multiple people are involved in your little emotional ride, it's bullying. Sorry, not sorry.

Only one side of the situation is being heard, and if a collective group of people "take your side" after the vent and create strong opinions about the opposing side based solely on your words: it's bullying.

I've been on the receiving end of both types of situations more than once. I do feel bad when I vent, because I know if the person could see what I'm saying they wouldn't like it. Because of that I rarely do it anymore, and only exclusively to close friends that I'm positive won't slander other people or spread that around.

I think gossiping is fine until deceit, no matter how subtle, is involved. If you heard "such and such" from someone, make sure you say so.

Some of it can be, but most isn't.

Even the stuff that is... that's just part of life. Learning how to cope with people being jerks is a part of growing up. As long as people are working toward making sure the rules themselves are fair and enforced fairly, the rest is just dealing with the kind of stuff you're always going to encounter in life.

Depends on the type of gossiping. Not all gossiping is bad. We as humans are very social creatures and therefore have a baser drive to be sociable at times. Sometimes this means we talk about others when talking about ourselves or the other participants is awkward, improper, rude, or otherwise undesirable. It's remarkably easy to segue from one topic, to gossiping, to yet another topic too; so most people don't often realize they're gossiping when they actually ARE!

There's Innocent Gossiping: This pretty much entails anything 'Mundane' or 'Commonplace' in life. This category of gossiping excludes talking negatively about others; rather it's oftentimes nothing more than idle speculation between parties about a third party not included in conversation. In an ideal situation all conversing parties are aware they're just idly chattering and nothing they've come up with is either fact, believable or true about the subject; nor are they trying to actively, subtly, or passively slander or demean the subject of the conversation. Usually not bullying; unless they are discussing something that was supposed to remain secret.

Secondly there's Grey Gossiping: This kind of gossip is kind of the catch-all; maybe the participants who are having the conversation are not intentionally being malicious in their chatter, they're just not talking about something that's appropriate for them to be talking about and idly speculating on. This kind of gossip is borderline bullying; it may not BE direct bullying of someone but it might just incite such actions from the participants or other listeners.

Finally there's Malicious Gossiping: This is flat out any kind of gossip initiated with a malicious intention by any conversation participant against the third party who has no voice in the conversation. This is outright bullying; if someone isn't just venting their spleen to a close friend to get over it. It's definitely bullying if it's done too often!

as for me,gossip is bully.I just hate people who gossips.I've the urge to punch them in their face if someones gossip me

As someone who is fine with gossiping most of the time, I'd say it only depends, like Melody said. Everyone gossips (well maybe not everyone), and we can't stop that. It's up to you on how you're gonna deal with it, and you're on your own if you wanna learn something from it.

Yes, especially if they start sayings things about that person KNOWING they're right by them, and acting like they said nothing.

Well, depends who you are gossiping about.

I would say it's on a thin line between bullying and not. Depending on the context it can easily be swung either way

I like gossiping sometimes haha.
I think as long as it's not absolutely horrible and it doesn't get found out, why would it be bullying? I wouldn't go out of my way to directly harrass someone (bully), but if someone were to annoy me and I wanted to gossip about them with a trusted friend, I don't think it would be considered bullying.

As many others have said in this thread, I definitely think it has to do with the specific content of gossip, and not just gossip in general.

Friends Fear She's Drinking CUSTARD Again:



Outside of that sort of gossip magazine (I was so disappointed to find that in the home of a friend's mother who I thought was better than that!) which seeks to publicly shame other people, gossip without any further action is harmless. It's only if said gossip leads to a material reaction where it could be considered bullying.

Generally I'd say that to be considered an act of bullying, it has to occur more than once, have intent to upset the person and it is often takes form due to discrimination of some kind but not always! If it's a one off incident from one person, it's more of a singular isolated incident which is still bad, but not quite the definition of bullying! If it were a matter of being multiple people each having one off incidents with the victim due to the gossip involved, then that could be considered bullying I guess?

If you just don't cross the line and go harassing/encouraging the harassment of people, I can't see the harm in it.