Gossip evolved to let groups share reputational information about people they can't evaluate directly, protecting the tribe from untrustworthy members. Today we do the same thing with influencers and product reviews, outsourcing trust decisions because we're drowning in information, not because we're dumb.
Have you ever heard this explanation of why gossip exists evolutionarily? Well, it's impossible for me to know one by one with each person about their character and their reputation through only firsthand experiences. And so how does a tribe function? Well, gossip is actually a necessary thing. I should know that if this person is untrustworthy, because rumors should spread so that the tribe as a whole becomes almost immune to this charlatan through gossip. And so I kind of feel like the same thing exists where these online influencers— don't you know they're just trying to sell you something? Well, yeah, there's some amount of that, but at the same time, what am I going to do, go test all my supplements myself? We're all going to outsource that task to somebody and we're going to trust them until they burn our trust, and then we're going to move on to the next one. It is the efficient way to do things, even though it's kind of seen as this low IQ move.
