I would like to encourage everyone to look truly at themselves and ask themselves: if they, quote-unquote, don’t like gossip, are they being honest with themselves?” These words, uttered by podcaster Julia Furlan when she appeared as a guest on a recent episode of US podcast Normal Gossip, showed me I’d found my people. Host Kelsey McKinney had asked Furlan about her relationship with gossip and Furlan had jumped to its defence. Gossip has long been branded with shame, she said, and it was time that changed.
Where modern technology has changed the way we consume media, it’s also altered the way we share secrets. Glossy mags that once ruled the roost have been replaced by a complex sub-network of YouTube pages and TikTok accounts, often referred to as “tea channels”. These pages exist online solely to recap and collate the juiciest of dirt – sometimes on major celebrities, but more often on their fellow video creators. In a world where anyone can be a celebrity, anyone can, too, be the subject of celebrity gossip.
