Gossips on the internet

Have you ever watched an American TV drama, "gossip girl"? In this drama, anonymous blogger called "gossip girl" blogs whatever interesting gossips about teenagers who are in a same area, NYC and send text messages to subscribers. Since everyone has cellphones and it's easy to access the internet and SNS wherever you are, it's happening not only in a TV drama, but in our reality lives!

10 majority ways that gossips spread through the internet

1. Email – One way to spread a rumor quickly is to send an email to all the contacts in your account, except the one the rumor is about, of course. Then they can forward it to all their contacts and on it goes from there. You better hope they delete your name when they forward it, or you might get blamed for starting it.
2. Facebook – Post your gossip on facebook and all your friends will know about it instantly. If they “like” it, comment on it or repost it, all their friends will see it too. Pretty soon you’ve got the rumor spreading quickly.
3. Myspace – Another social networking sight great for gossiping is Myspace. Post that rumor on a bulletin or your group’s message board and watch it spread like wildfire.
4. Twitter – You can tweet a rumor and all your Twitter followers will know your juicy gossip in 140 characters or less. They can re-tweet it to all their followers and in no time the gossip is flying through cyberspace.
5. Blogs – Some people love to spread gossip through their blogs. Even unintentional rumors are sometimes started by bloggers.
6. Website – You won’t believe some of the stuff you find posted on websites, and you shouldn’t either. There are whole websites put on the web just for the purpose of spreading misinformation. Always remember to check their sources.
7. YouTube – If you have a registered YouTube account you can upload an unlimited number of videos. If you have a video of someone doing something dubious, this is the best way to spread that rumor to millions of viewers.
8. Comments – A great way to anonymously spread gossip is to post a comment on a website, blog or YouTube video. You can log in under an assumed username and say all kinds of outrageous things without revealing your identity.
9. Chat rooms – Another anonymous way to spread rumors are internet chat rooms. You can start with an offhand comment and embellish it as you go.
10. Texting – If you see or hear something juicy to gossip about, you can send a text message to all your friends. That will get the thumbs flying as the rumor gets spread.

Japanese ways of gossiping through the internet

2 channel
It is the Japan's largest internet forum and about 2.5millions of posts are made everyday. Unlike SNS such as facebook and twitter, it is not required to mention users's names therefore it is the complete freedom of anonymous posts. There are tons of categories such as news, TV programs, fashion, food, culture, celebrities and so on. It can be used for exchanging informations but also gossiping and speaking ill of anything. It is said that many Japanese famous people try not to see 2 channel because they get hurt.
Moreover, since it is consisted by anonymous post, it sometimes announced lies such as homicide and people get to confused.


As you can see, there are so many ways gossip spread on the internet. You cannot see other people's face directly when you talk to someone on the internet that means those information are not necessarily truth.