User blog:SonOfTheSouth7/Advancing Your Station By Lowering Others

Most gossip I encounter is caused by people trying to advance their own standing in a given society or community by targeting others, especially those who are seen as being socially vulnerable. The weird, weak or unfortunate are often talked about by others who hope to gain the attention (and favor) of those around them.

Gossip within human society is essentially a verbal-social variation of the behavior we see in bee colonies during winter. In times of extreme cold, bees will shut themselves into their hives and struggle to stay close to the center of the hive, where the queen is. The center of the hive is the warmest place and so the bees periodically arouse from their hibernating slumber to work their way farther into the hive, pushing those around them out of the way.

This creates a net effect where the entire hive is slowly engaged in a process of struggling for each bee to get as close to the center as possible. This also makes for a great analogy about human behavior in regards to gossip and social character-assassination.