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A good gossip doesn’t just tell you that Sally broke up with Joe, they tell you that Sally broke up with Joe just a week after posting a bunch of (now deleted) romantic international vacation pics to Instagram. They don’t simply say “Brittany’s a bad coworker,” they tell you that no one at the office likes Britt because she microwaves her asparagus-heavy meal preps. They don’t mention that Mary is having a tough time with her sister-in-law and then drop it, they explain that her brother’s wife is a Disney adult who arranged for the entire family to spend their next Thanksgiving at Epcot and already sent out Venmo requests for a couple thousand dollars worth of Mickey Mouse breakfasts.
According to stereotype, this is a skill men — particularly straight men — just don’t have.
Their supposed inability to spin a good yarn has been a point of internet mockery, with memes and gags usually coming from the women in their lives who are forced to parse through the driest, most unsatisfying stories ever told. Like a hungry person fighting their way through a well-done steak, these tea-seekers must suffer to find a semblance of sustenance.
It’s hard not to laugh at the tension these skits and jokes highlight between the person wanting the entire story and the person giving them absolutely nothing. But underneath the comedy are deeper questions about the ethics, the stigma, and the history of gossip, especially who gets to participate. The way that the women who poke fun at their partner’s reticence online seek (and are denied) connection speaks to larger concerns. What does dude’s inability to share secrets — especially with other bros — mean for the much-discussed “loneliness crisis” among men?
That fallacy begins with how we define gossip. For a long time, it’s had a negative connotation, the act of talking poorly about someone behind their back. But more and more recently, researchers and social scientists like Megan Robbins have begun reassessing the term, broadening it to define all the ways we talk about other people, good, bad, and neutral.
Robbins and her team conducted a 2019 studythat examined the rates at which men and women gossip and if men and women had any differences when it comes to positive (e.g., “John bought a pair of nice shoes!”), negative (“John bought a pair of ugly shoes!”) and neutral (“John bought a pair of shoes.”). They found that men and women gossip positively and negatively at similar rates, but that women gossip neutrally more than men.
“It really corresponds with past evidence that women talk more about social topics than men,” Robbins, an associate professor in psychology at the University of California Riverside, says. “So there’s this practice element to talking about social topics, talking about people, even just in a neutral way, and men are just not doing it as much in the evidence that we have.”
Robbins’s study helps explain a few things. It debunks the trope that women are more inclined to disparage someone, and, at the same time, explains why people may perceive that women are better at gossiping or sharing information — if they’re gossiping neutrally at a higher rate, so they have more practice. The project also shows that despite the stereotypes, men do gossip, positively and negatively.
More than that, men enjoy gossip, even (and especially) when they’re at the center of it. A 2025 study from professor Andrew Hales and his research team found that men, more than women, “were consistently more open” to being talked about.
“I mean it, maybe it’s as simple as men just like attention,” Hales, who teaches at the University of Mississippi, tells me. Hales’s study focused on the targets of gossip, setting up a theoretical scenario in which a person leaves a party and then is asked whether they want the people who stayed to talk about them. Hales and his team found that people who were male and/or narcissistic were the most likely to want to be spoken about, even if the gossip was going to be negative.
“If you were to control for narcissism, men still are more comfortable being talked about than women are — so it’s not just that men are more narcissistic, although they are,” Hales says, noting that the findings contradicted the popular ideas about how men don’t enjoy gossip nor particularly like being the targets of it.
The population who have been thought to like gossip the least, actually enjoy its existence as much, if not more, than everyone else. But if that’s the case, why are they notoriously awful at it?
“I just don’t think there’s as many reps for men hearing a crazy story, and there’s a lot more reps for women,” Freid, a man, tells me. “We’re just not trained, you know?”
Freid primarily attributes men’s unskillful gossip to a lack of cultural opportunities to yap freely. He sees things like weekend brunches, group chats, and the ample discussion fodder provided by Bravo’s various reality shows as opportunities that mostly women have to sharpen their storytelling tools and observe how drama works firsthand. These conversations teach a person how to gab and, perhaps more importantly, how to respond to spicy information. Gossip is a two-way street; a question or quip can enrich the entire tale.
Straight men, he says, don’t have an equivalent.
While men do hang out, it never gets too chatty. Freid explains that gossip feels “messy” and, even something as simple as being curious about a story or a rumor could be construed as stirring the pot (men, he says, do not want to be seen as pot-stirrers). It’s not that straight men are inherently bad at gossip, it’s that they won’t allow themselves to openly partake in or enjoy it.
“I don’t think guys are really allowed to be messy and still have social credibility,” Freid says.
Why are so many straight guys so bad at gossiping?
What does it mean to be “good” at gossip?A good gossip doesn’t just tell you that Sally broke up with Joe, they tell you that Sally broke up with Joe just a week after posting a bunch of (now deleted) romantic international vacation pics to Instagram. They don’t simply say “Brittany’s a bad coworker,” they tell you that no one at the office likes Britt because she microwaves her asparagus-heavy meal preps. They don’t mention that Mary is having a tough time with her sister-in-law and then drop it, they explain that her brother’s wife is a Disney adult who arranged for the entire family to spend their next Thanksgiving at Epcot and already sent out Venmo requests for a couple thousand dollars worth of Mickey Mouse breakfasts.
According to stereotype, this is a skill men — particularly straight men — just don’t have.
Their supposed inability to spin a good yarn has been a point of internet mockery, with memes and gags usually coming from the women in their lives who are forced to parse through the driest, most unsatisfying stories ever told. Like a hungry person fighting their way through a well-done steak, these tea-seekers must suffer to find a semblance of sustenance.
It’s hard not to laugh at the tension these skits and jokes highlight between the person wanting the entire story and the person giving them absolutely nothing. But underneath the comedy are deeper questions about the ethics, the stigma, and the history of gossip, especially who gets to participate. The way that the women who poke fun at their partner’s reticence online seek (and are denied) connection speaks to larger concerns. What does dude’s inability to share secrets — especially with other bros — mean for the much-discussed “loneliness crisis” among men?
Let’s be clear: Men gossip!
When people say that men are bad at gossiping, it might come with the assumption that men don’t gossip. They can’t be good at it, because they don’t or only rarely partake. But that train of thought is built on a fallacy.That fallacy begins with how we define gossip. For a long time, it’s had a negative connotation, the act of talking poorly about someone behind their back. But more and more recently, researchers and social scientists like Megan Robbins have begun reassessing the term, broadening it to define all the ways we talk about other people, good, bad, and neutral.
Robbins and her team conducted a 2019 studythat examined the rates at which men and women gossip and if men and women had any differences when it comes to positive (e.g., “John bought a pair of nice shoes!”), negative (“John bought a pair of ugly shoes!”) and neutral (“John bought a pair of shoes.”). They found that men and women gossip positively and negatively at similar rates, but that women gossip neutrally more than men.
“It really corresponds with past evidence that women talk more about social topics than men,” Robbins, an associate professor in psychology at the University of California Riverside, says. “So there’s this practice element to talking about social topics, talking about people, even just in a neutral way, and men are just not doing it as much in the evidence that we have.”
Robbins’s study helps explain a few things. It debunks the trope that women are more inclined to disparage someone, and, at the same time, explains why people may perceive that women are better at gossiping or sharing information — if they’re gossiping neutrally at a higher rate, so they have more practice. The project also shows that despite the stereotypes, men do gossip, positively and negatively.
More than that, men enjoy gossip, even (and especially) when they’re at the center of it. A 2025 study from professor Andrew Hales and his research team found that men, more than women, “were consistently more open” to being talked about.
“I mean it, maybe it’s as simple as men just like attention,” Hales, who teaches at the University of Mississippi, tells me. Hales’s study focused on the targets of gossip, setting up a theoretical scenario in which a person leaves a party and then is asked whether they want the people who stayed to talk about them. Hales and his team found that people who were male and/or narcissistic were the most likely to want to be spoken about, even if the gossip was going to be negative.
“If you were to control for narcissism, men still are more comfortable being talked about than women are — so it’s not just that men are more narcissistic, although they are,” Hales says, noting that the findings contradicted the popular ideas about how men don’t enjoy gossip nor particularly like being the targets of it.
The population who have been thought to like gossip the least, actually enjoy its existence as much, if not more, than everyone else. But if that’s the case, why are they notoriously awful at it?
Why are men bad at gossiping
Comedian and podcaster Jared Freidintuitively believes what Robbins’s study proves: that uninspired male gossips just haven’t put in the work, like weight lifters who regularly skip leg day.“I just don’t think there’s as many reps for men hearing a crazy story, and there’s a lot more reps for women,” Freid, a man, tells me. “We’re just not trained, you know?”
Freid primarily attributes men’s unskillful gossip to a lack of cultural opportunities to yap freely. He sees things like weekend brunches, group chats, and the ample discussion fodder provided by Bravo’s various reality shows as opportunities that mostly women have to sharpen their storytelling tools and observe how drama works firsthand. These conversations teach a person how to gab and, perhaps more importantly, how to respond to spicy information. Gossip is a two-way street; a question or quip can enrich the entire tale.
Straight men, he says, don’t have an equivalent.
While men do hang out, it never gets too chatty. Freid explains that gossip feels “messy” and, even something as simple as being curious about a story or a rumor could be construed as stirring the pot (men, he says, do not want to be seen as pot-stirrers). It’s not that straight men are inherently bad at gossip, it’s that they won’t allow themselves to openly partake in or enjoy it.
“I don’t think guys are really allowed to be messy and still have social credibility,” Freid says.
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