anyone who says women gossip don't pay enough attention to guys, specially when they talk about women. what is it to me that you don't think x girl dresses well or that this aspect of her is unattractive? we're at work, it's not tinder

Ugh, that's some hostile shit.

I'm sorry you have to deal with it-- even just hearing it.

all terrible people gossip, regardless of chromosomes.

Too right. I'm aware this varies from culture to culture, but where I am if management overheard that sort of talk you'd probably be hauled in for a disciplinary.

@tosensei i mean, gossip has a social function, but what bothers me in this case is how women are treated as a spectacle to be commented on. that's something everyone does, and i catch myself doing this sometimes. people will always comment on women's appearance before their content

@darksideofyay no, gossip has no social function. gossip has an idiot function.

also: it's something i NEVER do. literally. if in a conversation, people start drifting into gossip, i start drifting into nodding and wishing i were somewhere else.

@tosensei there's reason to believe gossip has a primary role in the development of language: https://youtu.be/zHmoWNIO6eo

it's a bit controversial, but i think it makes sense

@darksideofyay yeah, well, there's reason to believe drowning has a primary role in the development of the ability to swim.

doesn't mean drowning is, in any way, not terrible.

That's totally no topic in my company. Not even during breaks. Neither about men nor women, and neither attractiveness nor the lack thereof. If there's talk about absent co-workers at all, which is rare enough, it's about what they're working on, did, or said.

The usual chit-chat is about what people do on weekends, or what they find remarkable, or something like that.

I legit don't know if this is going to be an unpopular opinion or not, but this is an actual hypothesis I have on this matter.

I think women on average are more social and thus form relationships much faster and easier. I think men (whether it's due to societal pressure to be a stoic hunk of rock, or just because of genetics I don't know) are slower and we form fewer friendships, and even in those that we form we tend to avoid gossip because we all think about each other that we're going to disapprove of that. Men tend to be more gossipy when they are relaxed. Usually with best friends only. You can see that the more social men are also the more gossipy ones, presumably because they feel relaxed in a larger group of people faster.

So I'm essentially behind the idea that women are more gossipy, I think that's good though. I think gossip is a form of social trust contract. The idea that gossip is bad is the stupid part, not that women gossip more. Maybe that's just me though

@Hazarth i think that's bogus, specially since there are studies showing that men talk more than women, and women are still perceived as chatty when they talk less than their male counterparts

@Hazarth also, i wasn't talking about best friends, i see men who barely interact daily shit talking about women when they're alone

@Hazarth I can't speak for sexes in general, but for me personally, lack of trust is indeed one of the reasons why I don't do that.

The other, even more important one, is that badmouthing co-workers, in particular over non-work matters, generates a miserable working environment for everyone because it destroys the team spirit.

Added benefit: since people know that I don't do that, the one time where I did need to take someone down worked well. That was a totally incompetent middle management asshole who nearly had fired me.

@bahua ok white knight

@tosensei ok, we will send you a medalhoky hero. And gossip has social function, a form of information exchange.

@tosensei "doesn't mean drowning is, in any way, not terrible."

you make too much damn sense.

@Fast-Nop "The usual chit-chat is about what people do on weekends, or what they find remarkable, or something like that."

WholesomeNop must be posting today instead of FastNop.

@aviophile yeah it's an exchange of information. but the information that's being exchanged is completely and utterly worthless. worse than random noise, because it's not even useful for cryptographic purposes.

@tosensei No, it isn't. Communication has more dimensions than just the content one - but it doesn't come as surprise that some devs lack the social skills to understand that.

@Fast-Nop disagree. i KNOW that communication has more dimensions. just like food has more dimensions than nutritional value.

but no matter how great the taste, i wouldn't ever want to eat spiced styrofoam slathered in mouldy ketchup.

because that's what gossip is. communicational garbage that is only being exchanged for the point of exchanging something. because far too many people believe they have social skills, but are, in fact, only incapable of being silent and alone with themselves.

@tosensei i guess you have your own definition of gossip being useless information only. No. You hear new guy with less experience gets more salary than you. That is gossip and useful.

@aviophile how is it useful?

if i think my salary is high enough, then it's high enough.

regardless of what other people earn.

don't know about you, but i determine my needs based on _me_, not on others. but then again, maybe pathologically comparing yourself to others is just a "social skill" i don't have ;)

@tosensei And there we are. You claim you understand that communication has more dimensions, but at the same time, you make clear that you have no idea.

@Fast-Nop no, i'm just saying that the other dimensions are either achievable without gossip, or garbage.

@tosensei If you want a relation, you'll have to communicate on the relation level (and not primarily on the content level). It's that easy.

@Fast-Nop disagree.

proof: me. only communicating on content level. having multiple different relationships to different people (who i _want_ in my life), and none to people who don't think "gossip is garbage".

@tosensei As I said above, I don't think badmouthing co-workers is a good way to achieve that, and you're free to choose your acquaintences as you like in private based on mutual interests. It's just that this doesn't work in a company because that's not in the hiring criteria.

@Fast-Nop it works _exactly_ that way, everywhere.

those colleagues i click with personally hate gossip as well. and those who gossip, i don't want to have any contact with beyond the _professional content_ - and i don't.

after all, that's what professionalism is about, isn't it? focussing on the content of the work, instead of unrelated private matters?

so why should i force myself into tolerating gossip, which not only hurts my work, but my mental health as well, while providing no benefits that i would acknowledge as "actually benefitial" instead of "actually harmful"?

@tosensei Because social trust is a currency. That's basic social skills, and if you totally don't get how that works, I can recommend you read up e.g. on transactional analysis.

Or you leave it at the apparent lack of social skills so far down the Dunning-Kruger-hole that it's funny to watch.

@tosensei that’s why nobody invites you out and youthink you have a small core of real friends but they don’t really like you that much either.

@aviophile only that all of your assumptions are wrong.

@Fast-Nop and like any currency, it only works if enough people believe in it. and i don't, simple as that.

@tosensei What, there's a wrong-way driver? Thousands of them!

@Fast-Nop well, if you look at mankinds history, you'll find that your joke is actually far too true.

@tosensei Humans as species can do a lot of things in a meciocre way. We can e.g. run, swim, climb, but nothing really well. The one trait that we have is organising in complex social packs.

That's why humanity as a whole wouldn't have made it if it had consisted mainly of people devoid of social skills.

@Fast-Nop not entirely true: we're number one in walking if you look at endurance (which was a hunting tactic: just walking after your prey until it collapsed of exhaustion) and in throwing things.

and i'd say relative to neural capacity, bees, ants, termites etc. are much better at complex social structures

@tosensei Walking and throwing are useless if you're alone, which is why banishment is pretty much a death sentence with indigenous people.

Also, no, termites, bees and ants are not more complex packs. They're larger, but have a lot fewer roles. Even if you look at human tribe level, the social interactions and executed plans are a lot more complex.

That is, if you even can see social interactions, which you just can't. Your social skills are that of a rock. Read up on transactional analysis or so to get a basic idea of how that shit even works.

@Fast-Nop

1. your arguments weren't about "what is useful if you're alone", but about "what we do better than others". (if your argument _were_ "what is useful alone", then communication skills are at the very bottom of the list, btw.)

2. i said "more complex _relative to neural capacity_". the key word being "relative".

i'd argue that "not being able (or willing) to read _the central word_ of a sentence" is a better sample of rock-level-communication-skills than "simply abhoring gossip and being able to communicate and work in a social construct without it"

@tosensei You obviously didn't get the point. Humans make it in packs because that kind of organisation is their major skill. Individually, humans are weak and slow.

But since you showed that your uptake on content level is just as bad as the one on social level, I see no point to discuss that any further with you. Have a nice day.

@tosensei dude, we created far more advanced civilization thanks to our intricate social skills which include gossipping and you are wiggling around to praise dumb ants which have been doing the same shit for million years.

@tosensei gossip is good to gain access to information about people about things that happen when we're not looking or about things that happened before you entered the social group. that's really, really useful. that's how women find out which guys are the creeps, for instance. that's how you find out your boss has a history of sexual harassment. that's how you know x, y and z would absolutely throw you under the bus.

people have to keep track about relationships with a ton of people and their relationships with others as well, and gossip makes that easier.