In the absence of hard core facts, gossip festers like an untreated wound. Add the emotion layer of relatives and family gossip has got to be one of hardest things to avoid. Sometimes it’s just merely annoying but often deeply hurtful.
Like polymorphic malware, it changes itself constantly to the environment so that upon detonation it causes the most damage.
Tactically, I’m always undecided as to either feed the gossip with facts to shut it up or just ignore it and let it grow and die organically.
Alternatively, it’s fun to poison the stream with fake news and monitor the reactions.
People always want it to be juicy so it seems just a good move to make things uninteresting. In my experience, the real facts of life are not what people really want to hear.
Move along nothing to see here