I find it easiest to open up about my problems to someone in between friend and stranger â someone who I know well enough to assess their personality, but someone who's distant enough that they don't (and probably will never) know my friends. This is because strangers are difficult to trust and friends can spread information to other friends.
If someone bothers you, and it's an understandable problem (like you don't want them to smoke around you), you should tell them straight off the bat. However, if it's some simple pet peeve of yours (such as you don't like it when they wear, say, baggy pants), you should learn to put up with it without complaint. However, I am shy and passive-aggressive, so instead of outright telling someone how they're bothering me, I ignore it, or at least pretend to. This doesn't work too well â it wears down on me, to the point where I only like to socialize in moderation, because otherwise I get annoyed without even knowing why.
I tend to not talk about my situations with third parties unless the person I'm talking to is, again, trustworthy but distant (and it is VERY rare for me to find people who are both), if I am trying to illustrate a point or mood (like when I wrote about my past friend Hope, who was recently returned to her family from DFCS), or unless I am only talking about the situation for entertainment's sake (like when I talk about my 7-year-old sister and her boyfriend). Sometimes, I vent to my parents, either to release steam or ask for advice.
It's difficult to define gossip. In the strictest sense, that is gossip â I am spreading information about people that does not directly involve the person I am speaking to. I tend to think of gossip more as he-said-she-said (as in the person spreading it is not directly involved in what happened) or with the purpose of giving a bias to the one you're talking to. (Of course, this would mean that history books are nothing but a lot of gossip.)
Again, I usually talk to people who don't know my friends in order to avoid any mishaps.
I think that people gossip for a very simple reason. It is a part of our nature because, as a species, we survive better if we learn things from others rather than have to learn everything firsthand ourselves. For example, if you hear that Bob has a bad temper from someone else, you know to be careful around Bob. But if no one told you about Bob's temper, you might do something stupid around him and end up in a really bad situation. Of course, the price of spreading important information like that also comes with the price of spreading more harmful information.
I also believe that people, particularly in this day and age, adore drama because they really have nothing better to do. Every person needs a certain amount of trauma in their life to be well-rounded. If you never have any serious trauma (and I'm talking about going from day to day not knowing if you'll live to see the sun tomorrow), and hardly any of us do, then less traumatic things seem like a bigger deal. Similarly, Southernors are famous for freaking out and buying bread and milk whenever there is snow â because we hardly ever see snow. For a Northernor, however, four inches of snow is nothing.
The only set of rules I can come up with is that people no longer be social animals. Our entire nature would have to be altered, because people thrive on communicating information, and some of that information is inevitably going to be about other people.
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rosecarmine
(no subject)
Date: 2002-09-19 05:06 pm (UTC)If someone bothers you, and it's an understandable problem (like you don't want them to smoke around you), you should tell them straight off the bat. However, if it's some simple pet peeve of yours (such as you don't like it when they wear, say, baggy pants), you should learn to put up with it without complaint. However, I am shy and passive-aggressive, so instead of outright telling someone how they're bothering me, I ignore it, or at least pretend to. This doesn't work too well â it wears down on me, to the point where I only like to socialize in moderation, because otherwise I get annoyed without even knowing why.
I tend to not talk about my situations with third parties unless the person I'm talking to is, again, trustworthy but distant (and it is VERY rare for me to find people who are both), if I am trying to illustrate a point or mood (like when I wrote about my past friend Hope, who was recently returned to her family from DFCS), or unless I am only talking about the situation for entertainment's sake (like when I talk about my 7-year-old sister and her boyfriend). Sometimes, I vent to my parents, either to release steam or ask for advice.
It's difficult to define gossip. In the strictest sense, that is gossip â I am spreading information about people that does not directly involve the person I am speaking to. I tend to think of gossip more as he-said-she-said (as in the person spreading it is not directly involved in what happened) or with the purpose of giving a bias to the one you're talking to. (Of course, this would mean that history books are nothing but a lot of gossip.)
Again, I usually talk to people who don't know my friends in order to avoid any mishaps.
I think that people gossip for a very simple reason. It is a part of our nature because, as a species, we survive better if we learn things from others rather than have to learn everything firsthand ourselves. For example, if you hear that Bob has a bad temper from someone else, you know to be careful around Bob. But if no one told you about Bob's temper, you might do something stupid around him and end up in a really bad situation. Of course, the price of spreading important information like that also comes with the price of spreading more harmful information.
I also believe that people, particularly in this day and age, adore drama because they really have nothing better to do. Every person needs a certain amount of trauma in their life to be well-rounded. If you never have any serious trauma (and I'm talking about going from day to day not knowing if you'll live to see the sun tomorrow), and hardly any of us do, then less traumatic things seem like a bigger deal. Similarly, Southernors are famous for freaking out and buying bread and milk whenever there is snow â because we hardly ever see snow. For a Northernor, however, four inches of snow is nothing.
The only set of rules I can come up with is that people no longer be social animals. Our entire nature would have to be altered, because people thrive on communicating information, and some of that information is inevitably going to be about other people.