There’s nothing more satisfying than watching justice being served, whether it’s by watching the season finale of our favorite legal drama or by seeing a public figure who has caused so much damage finally meet his fate. Of course, the latter is, by far, more rare and remarkable, but still, it feels good to see the right thing happen. We like to believe that we want justice to prevail; we advocate for the rights of minorities, despise oppression and want to fight injustice. But to us, justice exists on a larger scale; it’s a big power abusing the rights of the weak. People tend to overlook the injustice caused by their daily actions.

The perpetrator sleeps with a rested conscience at night, while the victim stays up because of what the perpetrator said. That’s all the perpetrator has done — talked and gossiped. But with those few words, which came out in between giggles and judgmental sneers, the perpetrator was unfair.

It’s a daily habit. It first starts with a genuine curiosity. We naturally want to know about an aspect of another’s life, and it’s always more interesting when we can’t. But some have to know; even if it’s not everything, they have to know something. Just one tiny detail and they can go on from there. They’ve gotten so good at investigating by now. They observe, listen and take out some parts. They fabricate a story with details, emotions and intentions out of nothing. And once the masterpiece is done, they move on to the next step. They are unjust.

They start spreading it around and are even better at presenting it than they were at making it. Some are more convincing than others. They provide so much context and detail that people can’t help but believe it. It’s not presented as gossip, but as necessary information. They say they mean well; it is all out of concern and the desire to prevent pain. They’re only telling this to close people. So it’s really fine. They convince others, but more importantly, they convince themselves. Their conversations start revolving around these small stories about people’s lives. They don’t realize how much they feed on it. They say they feel bad about what people are going through when they tell the stories, but in reality, it’s making them feel better. And they don’t admit that, not even to themselves. They are unjust.

They plant doubt, even in the minds of people who try hard not to believe them or to avoid these conversations. Because there’s no smoke without fire, right? Wrong. They’re so good at creating smoke; they’re alchemists, except that instead of turning metal into gold, they turn fiction into reality. The doubt spreads. People stop trusting each other, and wrong ideas are formed. They couldn’t handle not being involved, or not being part of the drama, so they invented one. They are the source of entertainment now. They are unjust.

Other times, gossip is based on truth, but a truth that was never meant to be shared. A truth that hurt, or mortified, or had an impact that should be forgotten rather than spread. But they don’t give people the right to keep the truth as a secret. They deprive the subjects from the right of painting their own image, or from moving on from past mistakes and experiences. They turn them into an object. Not just that — they use their magic wands again, but this time to remove the actual context, and paint that truth into a more interesting one, one that sheds a different light. They are unjust.

The thing about gossip is that it’s communal. There’s something about shared actions that make them more justified and righteous. If everyone’s doing it, then it’s probably fine. But isn’t that how injustice spreads in the first place? When the majority accepts it, the minority suffers, and others watch from the sidelines, condemning it but never stopping it. While many of us disapprove of gossiping and preach Eleanor Roosevelt’s mantra, stating, “Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people,” we listen to it and dismiss its impact. We believe it and start forming profiles from false information about people we don’t know — people we once admired. Our treatment of the object of gossip becomes different, and we are unfair to them. And sometimes, we find ourselves spreading gossip and injustice unknowingly. Sometimes we even gossip about our gossipers. It’s just a cycle of lies wrapped in innocent updates. We don’t want people to share updates about us, though; we are infuriated when they do. They don’t know us, so how dare they talk about us that way? We accept it for others but not ourselves. We become unjust.