Pretty much everything special about being human comes down to language, or more pointedly, gossip.
Evolutionary anthropology tells us that our ancestors didn’t just survive by hunting or gathering; they survived by chatting. A well-placed whisper could mean the difference between being invited to dinner or being dinner. Reputation and status was everything. One bad rumor was like a cut before antibiotics: often fatal.
So here we are: gossip gorillas - highly evolved, language-using apes with brains wired for gossip. All the poetry, philosophy, and science you admire are sophisticated versions of gossip, following the same rules.
What makes gossip good? The same thing that makes any story good: relevance, novelty, a touch of scandal, preferably with a twist ending. The brain wants gossip the way the body wants sugar. Social media platforms are simply vending machines stocked with clickbait, ragebait, and moral performance snacks. (Morals? Same story, but another time.)
And science? Shockingly similar. The best discoveries spread not because they’re rigorous, but because they hit the same notes as juicy rumor: surprising, relatable, emotionally charged, and ideally whispered at conferences with an air of insider exclusivity. “Preliminary findings suggest…” gets our attention as being the first to be "in the know".
Politics? Even simpler. Who’s in, who’s out, who’s suddenly texting their ex–constituents. Every global crisis eventually boils down to a status game (usually wealth or military power). It’s not that gossip distracts us from existential threats; gossip is the way we process them.
Which brings us to the punchline: gossip isn’t just social glue. It’s our entertainment system, our peer-reviewed journal, our psychological operating software. If human intelligence is largely language-driven, then what separates us from animals isn’t “soul” or “general intelligence,” but simply a particularly powerful form of gossip extended into math, law, science, and poetry.
Gossip rocks. Like an asteroid.
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