The Deliverer or the Receiver?
Most everyone (myself included) has been a willing participant in unkind, unverified negative gossip about others at one time or another, often under the guise of just “being honest” or sharing “opinions” and “feelings,” or having “intuition” about someone or something. Some people, however, rather than learning their lessons and growing out of it, tend to take this bad habit to the next level by using it as a weapon and spreading outright lies. And if you tend to be like me, generally straight-forward and direct, with a fairly accurate memory, a keen sense of fairness and a deep appreciation for common sense, it’s likely that you have to deal with more than your share of people who feel bothered or even threatened by it and react in underhanded ways.
Other than some family and ex-family, one particular example that comes to mind is the co-owner of a local wellness spa where I held hypno-coaching sessions when I first got started as a holistic practitioner many years ago. That manipulative and downright dishonest person managed to create a wedge between me and the other spa co-owner, with whom I’d had a good working relationship before her dishonest new partner came into the picture. While working there, I learned that, among other things, the dishonest partner was stealing tips given by clients to the spa practitioners; that didn’t happen to me only because I charged my clients and paid the spa commission directly. After I decided to stop holding sessions at the place, mainly due to its progressively negative environment, the dishonest partner spread false rumors about how I had stolen money from the spa (interesting, how certain people actually project onto others what they are doing themselves). I lost some clients because of that false rumor.
No surprise in the fact that some people out there need their fix of DDD (Daily Dosage of Drama) to survive, so they tend to gossip, lie, take things out of context, embellish or distort facts. By the way, I’m not referring to situations when each side has their own perception and interpretation of what happened, as that’s common in relationships; I’m talking about outright lies, fabrications, “alternate reality facts.” People often behave the way they were brought up, by following the example of a parent or parents, or other family members and authority figures in their lives. Mental illness and childhood trauma are often factors, among other issues. They lie to people-please, feel accepted, shirk personal responsibility, get what they want, bully, act in spitefulness and revenge, or just because they can. To some degree, it can even be understandable and forgivable, although still not acceptable.
As I mentioned, the fact that many people behave that way doesn’t surprise me. What continues to surprise me is the fact that they often find an eagerly attentive (and gullible) audience. There are always those who will believe their lies and fabrications without bothering to check the facts, those that feed that kind of behavior and mirror it back.
Sure, we can say (as I’ve said before myself), that people who believe rumors without checking the facts or bothering to ask for our version or point of view are not worth having around or be too close to, anyway. However, is this attitude just a way to let them off easy? Shouldn’t the audience who believes the lies and reacts negatively to them be held more accountable?
On a larger scale, is this why fake-news is running rampant? It certainly must be because it finds a willing and participating audience. A lazy audience that doesn’t bother to go through the trouble of checking the integrity of the sources and veracity of the news they’re eating up. A gossip-minded, compassionless audience that mirrors the news, that thrives in the negative, low vibration energy being spoon-fed to them, that drinks the kool aid. Why fake-news? Because it sells.
Keep’em Down
The current educational standards keep dropping, a trend obviously orchestrated by powers-that-be whose best interests are served by keeping people barely educated, uninformed and generally confused about what’s truly happening around them. For instance, why is there so much resistance against forgiving some student debt, especially considering the billions of dollars that are spent in incentives and tax breaks for corporations and special interest groups every year? Because the goal is to keep higher education high-priced and largely unattainable by most of the population.
In addition, social media has become a dangerous weapon as the preferred tool for spreading fake-news. Maintaining a system within which most people are too busy striving to survive to spend time, energy and resources figuring out the truth is part of the problem. Still, is the audience just a victim of circumstances or a willing accomplice in a broken system?
One way or the other, it’s high time for more personal accountability and responsibility. A good place to start is in our personal lives. How do we choose to act around negative gossip?
© Gisele Marasca-Vargas; 04/05/23
Image by Barbora Franzová from Pixabay
Reference:
Finding Reliable Sources: Fact-Checking Sites (nonpartisan)
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