We should seek out good intelligent friends who we can talk to about anything. Once we have them we should not let gossip get to us.
Victims of gossip must do good works to counteract gossip. Treat the gossip as a joke and it will fade into insignificance.
Enjoying gossip is incompatible with self respect. You enjoy it because you have been bad yourself and want others distracted from your own faults. To enjoy going behind the back of another to listen to evil talk and what does not concern you is incompatible with real self-esteem. Real self-esteem celebrates and tries to learn from the good in people.
Somebody is silly and malicious and who gossips reveals their own foolishness and that they are to be avoided. They mainly hurt themselves so do not worry about them.
The person who uses some terrible information to get a gossipy kick from what somebody did is really as bad as that person for taking advantage of the offence. The egoist should have better self-confidence than to have anything to do with gossip.
Gossip breeds
gossip and gossip breeds suffering. Tell nothing bad about anybody except for
the greater good of another or themselves or yourself and reading gossip in
newspapers is wrong except when you know you won't take what you read too
earnestly. We all have defects and many of them amount up gradually to making a
lot of harm. We forbid backbiting for we all have weaknesses and have done
terrible things or would have done them given the chance.