The reason behind gossiping

The Marcootjes, Katja’s, Brazes’en and Mexits are tumbling over each other in the gossip columns. One has supposedly been cheating for a hundred years, another makes nighttime visits to the mother of his son, and we haven't even talked about sex on the plane yet. It is certainly not a quiet time for the gossip press. But why do we want to know? Because it has everything to do with supply and demand. They were wondering about that at Jinek last night too. 

Through social media, everyone seems close, and thus the boundary of who belongs in your social life and who does not fades. Previously, you only gossiped about a distant neighbor or your troublesome sister-in-law (mine are the worst, by the way), that time is over. Humans seem to be naturally looking for misery, explains professor of neuropsychology Erik Scherder at the table with Eva Jinek. Envying, for example, celebrities occurs in the same part of the brain where you feel pain; the happiness of another causes pain. If Katja or Marco or Meghan or Bridget slips up, we experience pleasure because things are going a little worse for them. So, humans are actually quite twisted, or as Eva aptly puts it: what a sick mechanism.

And the sad part of the story? No one escapes it, because everyone seems to have these kinds of feelings from time to time. Although I can imagine that one person cares less about Bridget, André, and Monique than another…