The Industry Gossip

Everyone knows. Nobody says anything.

That’s how industry gossip works. Someone gets fired from a big company. Within a week, the story has traveled through every group chat, every happy hour, every “did you hear about…” conversation in the industry.

But nobody says it on the record. Because saying it on the record means becoming part of the story, and becoming part of the story means becoming a target, and becoming a target means risking the same thing.

The gossip is the institutional immune response. It distributes the information while maintaining deniability. Everyone knows what happened. Nobody officially knows what happened. The truth exists in whispers, and whispers don’t count in court.