So, I went back and forth on whether to title this post “can you keep a secret” vs “can you you keep this confidential?” or “can you keep this private?”, which each have slightly different connotations. “Secret” pattern-matches most to “gossip”, and it’s not actually what I meant to focus on necessarily. (I do mean to include gossip as a subset of what I’m talking about, but not the central example)
The original published version (which you were replying to) had the title “can you keep a secret?”, partly because “can you keep a secret?” is a more common phrase, and partly because it was a little more clickbaity a title that I thought people would actually click on. But, this comment made me kinda regret that choice.
That didn’t really address your comment, but I wanted to clarify first that I think “gossip” isn’t necessarily the right frame here.
I do think it is often the case that when people ask for confidentiality, the most important thing they care about is information not being shared in contexts that will damage them. (And, indeed, people are often much more okay with you sharing something outside of the original social circle)
Sort of a meta response:
So, I went back and forth on whether to title this post “can you keep a secret” vs “can you you keep this confidential?” or “can you keep this private?”, which each have slightly different connotations. “Secret” pattern-matches most to “gossip”, and it’s not actually what I meant to focus on necessarily. (I do mean to include gossip as a subset of what I’m talking about, but not the central example)
The original published version (which you were replying to) had the title “can you keep a secret?”, partly because “can you keep a secret?” is a more common phrase, and partly because it was a little more clickbaity a title that I thought people would actually click on. But, this comment made me kinda regret that choice.
That didn’t really address your comment, but I wanted to clarify first that I think “gossip” isn’t necessarily the right frame here.
I do think it is often the case that when people ask for confidentiality, the most important thing they care about is information not being shared in contexts that will damage them. (And, indeed, people are often much more okay with you sharing something outside of the original social circle)