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closeScoop ju jour: Gossip on the Internet is out of control
George Le Masurier
First of all, let me state unequivocally that Pamela Anderson is not pregnant with my love child. It’s true we both lived in the same Vancouver Island town for many years and that we were once in San Francisco at the same time. Well, within a month or so. At least we were in the same state together.
But let me set the record straight right now: we are both very happy in our current relationships, mine for over 20 years and hers for, well, a month or two.
I tell you this in an attempt to stop the Internet, from continuing to spread rumors and gossip about me. If you go to www.gossipreport.com, you’ll find these blatant lies.
Of course, I put these silly posts there myself to test the reliability of the site. GossipReport is just one of a new wave of Internet sites that allow people to dish on your friends or co-workers. Got a troublesome neighbor? Trash them on RottenNeighbor.com. Caught someone behaving badly in public? Post the incriminating pictures on TheDirty.com. College students can terrorize their classmates on JuicyCampus.com.
Nik Ritchie, the blogger behind TheDirty.com told a reporter, “This is the new-wave form of media. People want to know about their neighbors. They don’t want to hear about Britney Spears.”
There’s no denying that we are a celebrity-loving, gossip-rich society. The top-selling publications, such as People, compete with television shows like TMZ for the latest dirt on even the lowliest celebrities. That’s understandable.
But do you really want to know stuff like this, which come from actual posts on GossipReport.com:
“Everyone knows someone like Lacey. She’s gorgeous, nice, popular, athletic, etc. Lacey seems to have it all together, but I know something about Lacey that no one does... Lacey eats her toenails.”
“One of my friends roomed with this girl freshman year and said she would fart so bad in her sleep. She would fart so loud that it would wake my friend up in the night...gross!”
“So I heard ol boys dad ran for mayor in lil po’ dunk roanoke rapids and won...and since chris’ lifelong goal was to be a cop, even though he’s been turned down several times, (probably because he dropped out of college, has been arrested, and has serious anger management issues...not to mention an inferiority complex), now guess what, daddy pulls sum strings and what do you know...we get another cop who’ll prolly endup shooting sum kid with a playstation controller!!”
Almost all the posters on the sites I visited seem to share a universal inability to spell and use proper grammar.
The founder of GossipReport, Elizabeth Bloch, says she created the site to enable people to gossip constructively, not attack their enemies and generate lies. “We’re trying to make gossip as classy as gossip can be,” she says.
All people are naturally interested in those around them, what they are doing and what’s happening to them. And there can be value in gossip when it helps people process their problems or work through difficult situations.
But these sites, at least so far, traffic mainly in malicious personal attacks without any system to verify their veracity. I have no idea whether Lacey actually eats her toenail clippings or not.
By the way, I did a geographic search on the site and found no posts from East Pierce other than mine, and none on RottenNeighbor, either. We’re too nice for that, right?