RUMOURS: How Idle is Idle Talk?

Its quite an interesting common phenomena - rumours. Such a human thing and almost seems to turn up in ambiguous situation that has no answer to. Rumour is often strong buddies with "gossip" - whom is an evaluative form of social talk, acts like the "glue" in group cohesion and other things. But late last week, a little birdie decided to give me a call to tell me about some "news", I was sure she was digging about me for some gossip herself. But that is the fun thing about "information", especially the ones that are secret at first. Human beings have a weird sense that not knowing is a horrible thing to live with.


If you take it to the next level, new information has its social benefits:
(a) Attracts attention
(b) brings out emotion
(c) makes people feel inclusive
(d) affects attitude and actions


For the person who is generating/ supporting these rumours, they are in it for one of three reasons:
(a) fact finding
(b) relationship-enhancement
(c) to look better


Hence, when people who call me out the blue and ask me how I'm doing then throw an obvious question about aspects of my life, followed by a "Did you know that...." statement, the chances are you've just been caught out by my rumour radar.