Flin Flonners are quick to praise the many great things about our community, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t downsides to small-town life.
I’m talking about the sort of malicious assumptions, rumours and tall tales that take flight in a fishbowl environment such as ours.
I don’t know how many times over the years I have heard, in both my professional and personal life, about alleged marital infidelity on the part of my fellow citizens.
The ease with which such sensitive, quite possibly untrue information is disseminated shocks me. It tends to come from folks who weren’t there and don’t know what happened – if anything happened – and in many cases do not personally know any of the people involved.
Does it ever occur to those gossipers that they could be contributing to the break-up of a marriage or family? Or unwarranted distrust on the part of someone’s spouse? Or unfairly tarnished reputations?
The pain inflicted by infidelity rumours is not hypothetical. Several years ago, a resident contacted The Reminder with a very personal, heart-breaking story along these very lines. In talking to this kind woman, it quickly became obvious that her story was not appropriate material for a newspaper.
But her story nevertheless stuck with me. I realized how easy it is for gossipers to get the facts wrong, and for innocent people, and even their children, to get caught in the crossfire. All over nothing.
My conversation with this grapevine victim affirmed something I already knew deep down – that tossing around accusations about people’s personal lives is no lighthearted matter, especially in a small community where word can spread like wildfire.
Of course folks who distribute those sorts of rumours are never around to witness the devastation. They’re too busy feeling important by pretending to know everybody else’s business.
I know some infidelity gossipers like to portray themselves as heroes of sorts. In their minds, they’re working hard every day to make naïve wives and husbands – and everyone else, for some reason – aware of two-timing partners.
Again the problem is that none of it is necessarily factual. And even if it were demonstrably factual, whose business is it other than the impacted family? Why add more pain to what would be a tragic, confusing time for a family that calls our community home?
The answer is no surprise. As blogger Dawson McAllister observes, “people use gossip to hurt people, in order to feel good about themselves, and to feel like they have power over others.”
That’s very true. Some of the worst gossipers I have known have been those who ostensibly do not feel good about themselves. Gossip is their way of lashing out under the guise of, “Hey, I’m just giving you the facts as I know them!”
We would all be better off if the gossipers spared our close-knit community their misguided rumour-dissemination service. The potential for harm and inaccuracy is high, the benefits always zilch.
There’s more to making Flin Flon a family-friendly place than low crime rates and good schools. We must also respect our fellow citizens enough to steer clear of malicious gossip.
If you’re a gossiper reading this, ask yourself this: What’s the downside to closing your mouth?
Local Angle is published on Fridays.
