Always minus someone: WhatsApp’s side-chat/gossip

The article explores the dynamics of unofficial WhatsApp groups that facilitate gossip among friends, family, and colleagues by excluding one or more individuals.

It discusses the historical roots and evolutionary function of gossip, asserting it as a tool for tracking reputations and reinforcing social norms.

The author portrays these splinter groups as platforms where genuine opinions and judgments are shared, contrasting them with the more public main group chats.

Additionally, the article highlights the emotional impact and subtle power dynamics involved in creating and participating in these unofficial forums.

SEPTEMBER 15 — There is the official group: Family, office, old classmates who still pretend the Form 5 reunion is happening. Everyone is in it. Birthdays get a sticker. Political links get communally ridiculed. Lunch photos are shared. Blah blah blah.

Then there is the other group which consists of the same people — minus one. Sometimes minus two.

Given a name so bland it could pass as a logistics chat, and immediately put to its real use: Talking about the person who is not there.

If this sounds familiar, congratulations. You have either built one of these groups, sat inside one, or — the more interesting fate — you are the missing name.

The unofficial supplement WhatsApp facilitates and certainly did not invent: Gossip. It merely removed the last inconvenience.

A brief history of gossip

Once upon a time you needed a corridor, a kopi-o, a lowered voice. Now you need a few ticks, a contact list and hopefully people’s generally acquiescence with being involuntarily added to a group.

But going even further back, gossip may have begun with hands; primates nurturing alliances by grooming: time-consuming, one-to-one, limited by how many backs you can scratch before sunset.

Robin Dunbar’s argument, now a kind of origin myth in this field, is that language arrived as cheaper grooming I.e. talk let us service several relationships at once.

And what did we talk about? In sampled conversations, social topics — who did what to whom — take up around two-thirds of the airtime.

Gossip, in this telling, is not a later “corruption” of speech, it may be why speech was worth evolving in the first place.

Gossip tracks reputations. It flags free-riders and serves as a release valve for felt injustices.

It teaches the unwritten rules faster than any official briefing. Baumeister et al treated it as a manual for group life: how we learn what “we” will and will not tolerate (see note 1).

Gossip gathers norms and it bonds the people doing the gathering. Experiments show pairs who trade talk about absent others often leave more aligned, and sometimes more cooperative.

The research does not baptise the WhatsApp splinter group. It only explains why the habit feels so old.

We did not invent talking about the missing person. We inherited it, then gave it a group name bland enough to look like logistics.

Back to WhatsApp groups (minus one)

What is striking is not that people complain about each other. People have always done that.

What is fresh is the architecture. The main group remains the public face of belonging. The side group is the disavowed extra — the place where the actual judgments and “real talk” live.

Call it the unofficial supplement of friendship: The official chat says we are close. The unofficial one decides who is allowed to be close enough.

Why bother? Because talking about someone who cannot answer back is strangely bonding. Shared irritation is cheaper than shared vulnerability. You do not have to risk a fight. You just add everyone except them and let the comments do the work.

There is also a little power in it, right? As in, who gets to create the smaller room? Who decides the guest list?

For people who feel slightly ignored in the big group, the splinter chat is a promotion. Suddenly they are curators of the real conversation.

Finally, perhaps the most humbling aspect of this entire phenomenon. Always remember: There is almost certainly a group of your friends which— for whatever reason — doesn’t include you.

Note 1: Two helpful works on gossip include Dunbar, R. I. M. (1996). Grooming, gossip and the evolution of language. Harvard University Press and Baumeister, R. F., Zhang, L., & Vohs, K. D. (2004). Gossip as cultural learning. Review of General Psychology, 8(2), 111–121.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.

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本文探讨了非官方 WhatsApp 群组的动态，这些群组通过排除一个或多个成员，促进了朋友、家人和同事之间的八卦传播。

它探讨了流言蜚语的历史根源和演变功能，并断言它是追踪声誉和强化社会规范的工具。

作者将这些分裂的群体描绘成分享真实观点和判断的平台，并将它们与更公开的主群聊进行了对比。

此外，文章还重点介绍了创建和参与这些非官方论坛所涉及的情感影响和微妙的权力动态。

9月15日——官方群组里有：家人、同事、老同学，他们还假装中五同学聚会还在进行。每个人都在里面。生日会贴个贴纸。政治立场会被大家一起嘲笑。午餐照片会被分享。等等等等。

还有另一组人，成员与第一组相同——只是少了一个人。有时少了两个人。

取了一个平淡无奇的名字，仿佛是物流聊天，却立即发挥了真正的作用：谈论不在场的人。

如果这听起来很熟悉，恭喜你。你可能创建过这样的组织，或者身处其中，又或者——更有趣的情况——你就是那个缺失的名字。

WhatsApp 促成的非官方附加功能（当然，它并非发明了这项功能）是：八卦。它只是消除了最后一个不便之处。

八卦简史

从前，你需要一条走廊、一杯咖啡、压低声音。现在，你只需要几个勾选标记、一份联系人列表，以及人们普遍默许你被不情愿地拉进某个群组。

但追溯更久远的过去，八卦可能起源于手；灵长类动物通过互相梳理毛发来维系联盟：这很耗时，一对一的，而且受限于日落前你能挠多少次背。

罗宾·邓巴的论点，现在已成为该领域的一种起源神话，即语言的出现是为了更便宜的梳理方式，也就是说，谈话让我们能够同时维系多种关系。

我们聊了些什么呢？在抽样的对话中，社会话题——谁对谁做了什么——占据了大约三分之二的谈话时间。

在这种说法中，闲言碎语不是语言的后来“腐化”，它或许正是语言最初发展演变的原因。

流言蜚语影响着人们的名声，揭露搭便车者，并成为人们宣泄不满的渠道。

它比任何正式简报都能更快地教会人们不成文的规则。鲍迈斯特等人将其视为群体生活的手册：它告诉我们“我们”能够容忍什么，不能容忍什么（见注释1）。

闲聊能形成规范，也能将参与其中的人联系起来。实验表明，经常谈论不在场其他人的两人，往往会更加合拍，有时也更愿意合作。

这项研究并未给WhatsApp上的这个分裂群组命名，只是解释了为什么这种习惯会让人感觉如此古老。

我们并非首创谈论失踪人员，而是继承了这种做法，然后给它取了个平淡无奇、听起来像后勤保障之类的名称。

返回 WhatsApp 群组（减去一个）

真正令人惊讶的并非人们互相抱怨。人们一直都会这样做。

真正令人耳目一新的是它的架构。主群体依然是公开的归属感象征。而边缘群体则被视为被排斥的旁观者——真正的评判和“真心话”在此上演。

不妨把它看作是友谊的非正式补充：官方聊天记录表明我们关系亲近，而非正式聊天记录则决定谁有资格与对方走得足够近。

何必呢？因为谈论那些无法反驳的人，竟能产生一种奇妙的亲近感。共同的恼怒总比共同的脆弱要划算得多。你无需冒争吵的风险。你只需把除了他们之外的所有人都加进来，然后让评论发挥作用即可。

这里面也包含着一些权力，对吧？比如说，谁来布置小房间？谁来决定宾客名单？

对于那些在大群组中感到被忽视的人来说，小组讨论反而是一种提升。他们突然间成了真正对话的组织者。

最后，或许是整个现象中最令人感到谦卑的一点。请永远记住：你的朋友中几乎肯定有一部分人——无论出于什么原因——不把你包括在内。

注1：关于八卦的两部有益著作包括Dunbar, RIM (1996). Grooming, gossip and the evolution of language. Harvard University Press和Baumeister, RF, Zhang, L., & Vohs, KD (2004). Gossip as cultural learning. Review of General Psychology, 8(2), 111–121。

* 这是专栏作家的个人观点。

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