Slander Me Or Lose Me Forever

Don't overrate this not talking about people behind their backs.
If the alternative is a stony silence that means anything but that everything is okay, then spare me. Talk about me behind my back -- please. Get it off your chest, make me the embodiment of all things bad that you need me to be.
Passive aggression is patronising, annoying and childishly embarassing. Especially if the consolation is a mere: Aren't you glad I'm not talking about you behind your back (and that I'm obviously angry-but-not-telling-you-why to your face instead). Anyone who subscribes to that notion in favour of speaking up belongs to the email list of The Sadly Deceived And Ultimately Pitiful.

Is there some mystical nobility attached to the promise of merely not talking behind someone's back in favour of disquiet seething? If there is, it eludes me. Who says the right thing to do is to stay quiet when we are hurt, or when we have been wronged, or we merely need a subject for lunchtime conversation?

If you ask me, it is more likely to be the private deception that some love to indulge in when they pride themselves on being one of those people who -- yawn. -- never talks about people behind their backs.

Great. Just what we need at a party: A sanctimonious bore.

We are human. We talk. That is what we do, that is how we survive. Talking is release, talking about the object of your ire can only be good for you. Do it, I say; do it, and don't be afraid of it.

Who needs another uninspiring promise of merely not having been slandered? Colleague, foe or friend -- they all deserve to be the subject of some bitching about. It's deliciously, perversely, obscenely flattering. They exist, we exist, talking about them testifies to their very human existence in conditions we can all relate to.

On the other hand, reducing abject hate to a simmering silence is dishonest and unkind, it is untrue to the basic instinct. At best, it is piteously time consuming and bile producing. So I say to the guarantee of not talking behind my back: Spare me. I live, therefore I talk (and am talked about behind my back or to my face or whichever end of me you choose to address your distress). I am stating categorically that I would rather someone talk behind my back then pretend nothing is wrong, even when I am out of earshot.

How spectacularly insipid is that?

I'd talk about someone who bugs me. Heck, I'd do it about someone who even mildly titillates my interest. They should be so lucky.

After all, if the need to rationalise, articulate and layman-psychoanalyse helps makes a day that much better, then it is the logical thing to do. If "talking behind someone's back" is the pressure valve for some bitter little interior monologue that could potentially cause acid indigestion to your own body then a little is healthy, more is a bloody good idea, and too much is just not enough.

Really, there should be an international body organising retreats, lectures and entire conferences for it. Turn it into an industry -- save all those who still buy the obsolete notion of not talking behind someone's back. Call the movement Baby, Talk About Back.

Suggested coursework leading to a degree might include:
101: Introduction to B-Tab: The Power Of Getting Verbal
204: B-Tab Basics - Bitchery And The Art Of Staying Sane
302: Getting In Touch With Your Inner Bitch And Getting Her Nasty Ass To Say Hello To The World
403: Physiology And The Psychology Of B-Tab
507: Advanced Bellyaching: The Physics Of Telling It To Someone's Back And Plausible Deniability

Do it if it makes smiling at the subject of your venom easier, if the alternative is delivering a hard smack upside his or her head. Do it to (and with) the best of your friends, who will sympathise and tell you everything will be okay in the end, don't let the turkeys get you down. Hell, do it to rally innocent bystanders to your cause. Do it like you mean it. Do it, uh, for your country.

But most of all, do it because, well, you care about you.

Talk, after all, is cheap. They may be fighting words, no doubt, but they are words after all, in all their transient glory. And what someone doesn't hear about before you manage to get a headstart to fleeing the country certainly won't hurt you.