This was such a good read! I remember reading Dunbar in college and was just as struck with gossip as an evolutionary necessity then as I am now. I have recently decided I absolutely do not care about influencer gossip and have started unfollowing those parts of the internet but then I feel incredibly disconnected! In the past year particularly, I've found myself on the outskirts of conversations because I didn't know that Kylie and TC started dating (and there seems to be a new swath of famous people I don't even know about).
This also had me thinking about how even 'gossiping among friends' can blue lines. I find myself going out to dinner with old friends from high school, college, etc and we spend a portion of the meal trading stories back and forth about people we used to know, based on who's still in our corner of the internet. Marriages, kids, business endeavors, etc. I think what Torres says about it being 'a form of entertainment' is spot on. I think it also helps me (us?) connect to who we once were, what our lives used to be, and so on.
I'm not proud! And I've recently (after the Break Free detox!) started unfollowing not only influencers but some of those people I haven't seen in 10+ years. Do I need to know that one girl in my sociology class moved from New York to New Jersey? I don't, lol. I also have kept reddit deleted from my phone since the detox, I didn't realize how addicting those snark threads can be (would sometimes find myself caught up in drama about people I hadn't even heard of!)
This was such a good read! I remember reading Dunbar in college and was just as struck with gossip as an evolutionary necessity then as I am now. I have recently decided I absolutely do not care about influencer gossip and have started unfollowing those parts of the internet but then I feel incredibly disconnected! In the past year particularly, I've found myself on the outskirts of conversations because I didn't know that Kylie and TC started dating (and there seems to be a new swath of famous people I don't even know about).
This also had me thinking about how even 'gossiping among friends' can blue lines. I find myself going out to dinner with old friends from high school, college, etc and we spend a portion of the meal trading stories back and forth about people we used to know, based on who's still in our corner of the internet. Marriages, kids, business endeavors, etc. I think what Torres says about it being 'a form of entertainment' is spot on. I think it also helps me (us?) connect to who we once were, what our lives used to be, and so on.
I'm not proud! And I've recently (after the Break Free detox!) started unfollowing not only influencers but some of those people I haven't seen in 10+ years. Do I need to know that one girl in my sociology class moved from New York to New Jersey? I don't, lol. I also have kept reddit deleted from my phone since the detox, I didn't realize how addicting those snark threads can be (would sometimes find myself caught up in drama about people I hadn't even heard of!)