Like, why do you care so much if she’s sleeping with a new guy after just divorcing or her coming out or that rich family buying a new mansion? How does that affect your life?
Like, why do you care so much if she’s sleeping with a new guy after just divorcing or her coming out or that rich family buying a new mansion? How does that affect your life?
I think most humans have a certain desire to gossip, probably a side effect of us being social animals. I can imagine that gossiping can be somewhat beneficial if you live in a tribe or small town.
With our way of life shifting to large cities in which you hardly know your neighbour, and digitalization making sure we regularly see these celebrities, I can see how that might trick our brains into caring about their everyday lives.
Yeah, you can imagine how within a small community, if person x was particularly bad at paying their debts for instance, that would eventually get around and people would stop loaning to them. This makes fewer people lose their own resources by not loaning them, but also just knowing that gossip happens creates a social pressure to conform to pro-social behaviors.