Kelsey McKinney defends gossip as a vital social skill in new book

In You Didn’t Hear This From Me, Kelsey McKinney argues that gossip, long maligned, is a necessary form of communication and community-building.

Illustration by Febrina Tiara

By Anna Fadiah and Hayu Andini

At its core, gossip is simply one person talking about another who isn't in the room. In You Didn’t Hear This From Me, author and journalist Kelsey McKinney defends gossip as a vital social skill that plays an essential role in how people relate to each other. With the same witty yet thoughtful tone that helped her podcast Normal Gossip become a surprise hit, McKinney argues that gossip isn’t shallow or shameful—it’s human.

This focus on gossip as a tool for empathy and survival is central to McKinney’s book, which builds on the success of her podcast. She created Normal Gossip during the pandemic, realizing that what she missed most during lockdown wasn’t just brunch or travel—it was the emotional nourishment of trading stories with friends about people she barely knew. That “friend-of-a-friend” gossip, usually dismissed as trivial, became her launching point for a deeper meditation on the cultural weight of talking behind someone’s back.

Gossip as community glue

Kelsey McKinney’s defense of gossip pushes back against centuries of moralizing. Kelsey McKinney defends gossip runs through every chapter, with her insistence that idle talk is often anything but idle. Gossip, she says, can be a bonding tool, a form of shared language that lets people make sense of their environments, build trust, and even protect each other. In McKinney’s view, “normal gossip” functions less like a scandal sheet and more like community glue.

The stories McKinney features in her podcast—like the time a woman gave birth just weeks before her friend and “stole” her rare baby name—aren’t outlandish tabloid fodder. They’re small, funny, emotional moments that reflect larger truths about friendship, betrayal, and pride. Whether it’s a battle over a Tupperware container or a landlord’s petty revenge, these tales illuminate the everyday dramas that define social life.

McKinney sees these stories as teaching tools. What might look like shallow chatter is, in her telling, a form of micro-philosophy—each anecdote a miniature case study in human behavior.

The moral anxiety around gossip

Despite her confident stance, McKinney doesn’t ignore the tension between gossip and morality. Raised by an evangelical preacher, she was taught from childhood that gossip was a sin—particularly a sin for women. Men struggled with lust, she learned, but women were spiritually endangered by idle talk. As a girl, McKinney prayed to stop gossiping. Yet she couldn’t resist the joy of storytelling—the way a well-timed anecdote could hold a listener’s rapt attention.

Rather than frame her younger self as malicious, McKinney embraces this tendency as an early sign of her love for narrative. She admits that rearranging punchlines and tweaking the timing of a story became second nature. For her, gossip wasn’t about cruelty. It was about shaping meaning from chaos.

Her honesty is compelling, even when her argument strains under the weight of too many examples. She writes about parasocial relationships, celebrity culture, church hypocrisy, and workplace whisper networks, moving quickly from Britney Spears to the Stasi archives in Berlin. These wide leaps sometimes leave the reader dizzy, but they’re all tied together by her central claim: gossip is not just a guilty pleasure—it’s a necessary part of being human.

Gossip as survival

One of McKinney’s most convincing arguments is that gossip can keep people safe. She revisits the “Shitty Media Men” list, an anonymous spreadsheet shared among women in journalism and media in late 2017. The list named men known for inappropriate or abusive behavior, ranging from sexual harassment to creepy emails. While critics labeled the list as reckless or even defamatory, McKinney frames it as an example of prosocial gossip—a term coined by researchers at UC Berkeley.

Prosocial gossip, according to the research, serves a protective function within groups. It warns people about threats, helping communities avoid danger. In this context, gossip isn’t vindictive—it’s defensive. McKinney describes seeing the name of a man who had once made her uncomfortable at a party, and feeling a strange mix of anger and validation. The whisper network had worked.

In environments where formal complaints are ignored or discouraged, gossip may be the only way women—and other marginalized groups—can protect one another. McKinney’s point is clear: gossip isn’t inherently good or bad. Its impact depends on the context and intent.

A buffet of ideas, not a focused argument

Yet while You Didn’t Hear This From Me offers a bold defense of gossip, it often feels more like a curated collection of ideas than a fully structured argument. McKinney’s storytelling instincts are sharp, but her tendency to jump from one topic to another sometimes muddles the thesis. We go from Søren Kierkegaard to Emily Dickinson, bell hooks to Oscar Wilde, all within a few pages.

Each reference is intriguing in isolation, but the connective tissue between them is often thin. McKinney wants to cast gossip as both literary and political, philosophical and playful. However, in trying to touch every base, she sometimes leaves the reader wondering where she really stands.

The discussion of Elena Ferrante’s unmasking, for example, raises valid concerns about authorial privacy and the ethics of speculation, but it’s unclear how it fits with the rest of the book’s core ideas. Similarly, McKinney’s detour into Queen Bees & Wannabes and the toxic dynamics of teenage girlhood adds color, but lacks a strong tie to her argument about gossip’s adult significance.

Gossip as narrative joy

Still, there’s no denying that McKinney has a gift for writing. Her prose is clever without being smug, and her descriptions of early gossip sessions—half confession, half performance—are filled with warmth and humor. She respects the audience's intelligence while also inviting them to laugh along. If You Didn’t Hear This From Me doesn’t always succeed as a scholarly inquiry, it works beautifully as a love letter to storytelling in its messiest, most human form.

For readers who have ever felt guilty for enjoying a juicy anecdote or whispering about a mutual friend’s bizarre behavior, McKinney’s book offers comfort. Gossip, she reminds us, isn’t a character flaw—it’s a social function. It’s how we connect, protect, and entertain. And in a world that often demands perfection and politeness, gossip allows people to be real.

While the structure of You Didn’t Hear This From Me can be uneven, its heart is clear. Kelsey McKinney defends gossip not just as a survival tool, but as an art form. Whether exchanged over coffee, text messages, or viral tweets, gossip holds a mirror to who we are—and who we pretend to be. The book might not answer every question it raises, but it starts a conversation worth having. And for that, McKinney deserves the last word.