“Tea channels” and the changing landscape of gossip online
It’s okay to admit that you gossip, we all gossip sometimes. Gossip has come a long way, today we consume it daily on our screens. The Internet is abuzz with gossip, reflecting our own carnal instinct to talk and talk about others: According to a 2019 University of California Riverside study, a person spends an average of 52 minutes each day gossiping. And it’s only increased over time: along with the rise of YouTube, Twitter and other social platforms has come greater publicization of gossip. Today, it seems like everywhere we look, gossip is being exchanged.
It is very easy today to find context on scandals as commentary videos thrive on YouTube. The average viewer can now become an expert on any gossip or scandal, as it’s all explained on the internet for our entertainment. In a recent YouTube scandal, Colleen Ballinger’s unserious ukulele apology videos have resulted in countless drama and explanation videos of the situation. Name anyone else under heat on the internet, and by a simple Twitter or YouTube search you can find gossip and tea pages hopping on to put in their two cents on the situation.
Gossip is defined by the American Psychological Association as the act of personal conversation of socially relevant and sometimes unsubstantiated information. But in recent years, the proliferation of gossip has blurred the line between what is private and public information. The gossip that used to be passed by word of mouth is now nested in podcasts, YouTube videos and in other social media; there has been an emergence of tea channels on YouTube like Tea Spill and RRG or even unrelated channels and accounts, offering their input on social scandals.
The increase can be directly tied to cancel culture, and psychological themes of gossip as a way of social protection. In the simplest sense, we just have the natural instinct of the need to know “what happened?” This phenomenon raises serious questions about how gossip is treated today, as a surplus of information exists on our screens. Hyper-online terms like doxxing and gathering receipts are all part of our newly created online gossip culture, as we navigate a world of sensationalized information.
Lawrence Ian Reed is a professor of psychology at New York University. His current research focuses on how people express emotions through facial expressions, and though he is not an expert on gossip, he shared a few thoughts on why gossip is a big part of our culture.
“I think that people have an evolved desire to gossip because it allows people to judge who may or may not be a good person to interact with before interacting with them,” Reed says. And he’s proving steady logic. A 2019 study found that people gossip for multiple reasons, including protection and building relationships. “This is similar to our evolved desire to have a good reputation.”
However, he is not entirely confident in how we treat gossip today, due to the lack of context. “The problem is that gossip doesn’t include a full picture of an individual,” Reed said. “And people shouldn’t be judged using small bits of sensationalized information circulating about them.”
These quick judgments influenced by gossip have a profound effect on young people growing up with the internet. They are worried about reputation and online persona on top of the already common self-questioning and unstable social life of young adults. NYU psychology student Adelaida Mesa is concerned about her digital footprint, and for a reason. “Gathering receipts” refers to finding evidence to support allegations. In recent forms on the internet this can be seen as screenshots of texts, search histories and old tweets.
“[My digital footprint], it’s always something I’ve been worried about since I was very young,” Mesa said. “But I feel like people don’t worry about their digital footprint enough.” So is the case. Many influencers and celebrities have released apology videos over racist tweets. One from 2012 by YouTube makeup artist Laura Leeresulted in her deleting her Twitter. And yes, this is online for anyone to see.So of course gossip bloggers and channels were quick to jump to it.
“Anyone that’s a public figure knows the kind of platform that they have,” Mesa said. “So anything they want to show to the public, they will have to deal with the rewards or consequences of those actions.” Anything that exists on the internet can be dug up, and it doesn’t matter if circumstances or the poster has changed; the hive-mentality of online gossip has little room for forgiveness, resulting in countless apology videos.
Another NYU student, sophomore Richa Mallampalli, keeps up on internet gossip with almost professional fervor. Her interests lie in pop culture and the business aspect of the entertainment industry. She is avid on keeping up with celebrity gossip pages like @deuxmoi on Instagram. “I’ve just been following pop culture since I was very young,” Mallampalli shrugs. “I like to know what’s going on.”
She recounts seeing on gossip pages online that Olivia Rodrigo and Louis Partridge could be dating: “I was like ooh, this is so interesting this is exciting,” Mallampalli said. “After like a minute I didn’t really care.” However she expresses that gossip online can go too far.
“I’ve seen people get canceled for just getting with someone,” Mallampalli said. And that is the major fault in gossip pages — they allow anyone to form an opinion on situations that are out of context and may lack information, as Professor Reed expressed.
“I feel like a lot of times people in cancel culture don’t make their own opinions,” Mallampalli said. “They just kind of piggyback on other people’s opinions too, without really taking their time to think through and acknowledge the actions which are cancellable or not.”
Mallampalli’s approach to gossip online is to take everything with a grain of salt. “It’s one of those things I look at and I’m like ‘OK!’,” Mallampalli exclaimed. “It’s not something I make my day revolve around, it’s something I enjoy consuming.”
