Smiling Assassins
I recently came across a fascinating series of studies about women who disguise negative gossip as concern.
Instead of hearing, "Sophie's a mess," you hear, "I'm so concerned about Sophie… she's been drinking a lot lately. I just hope she's okay."
Translation: Sophie's spiraling. Pass it on.
The studies found that framing gossip as concern protects the speaker while quietly damaging the target. Women who use this tactic are rated as more likable, more trustworthy, and more desirable as partners and allies.
These findings make no sense to me at all.
We all know people who perform concern as a social strategy, polishing their own virtue while shrinking the person they’re supposedly worried about. Ask yourself: Are they really more likable (ah, no), more trustworthy (that's cute), or more credible allies (be serious)?
So what's going on here?
For most of human history, reputation was survival. In small, interdependent groups, exclusion meant losing access to resources, protection, belonging itself. Among women, where direct confrontation historically carried higher costs, indirect aggression evolved as one of the most effective forms of competition.
Whisper networks, reputational sabotage, “bless-her-heart” concern aren’t random behaviors but evolved survival strategies. And the claim is, that's why they still work.
W. David Marx offers a useful lens in his fascinating book, Status and Culture, where he argues that modern life runs on fragile hierarchies where every gesture is a signal, and every signal shapes your place in the ecosystem. "Concern" is the perfect disguise. It broadcasts empathy and virtue while quietly lowering the target's standing. What sounds like gossip is, in practice, strategic positioning, protection, ascension.
That’s their take. Mine’s simpler. What Marx calls “strategic positioning” is also gossip. Petty, put-you-down to lift-me-up gossip. You can dress it up as a survival technique all you want, and yes, there may have been contexts where this kind of maneuvering made sense, but in the here and now it doesn’t signal intelligence or social skill. It signals someone laundering contempt through concern and mistaking that camouflage for virtue.
Stay away from people like this.
They’re dangerous not because they’re bold or intimidating or especially clever, but because they never stand anywhere long enough to be accountable. They’re full of shit. They don’t scream or posture. They stay on the sidelines, smiling, nodding, keeping score, filing things away. Their whole move is reputational parasitism. They feed off proximity, borrow credibility, and say whatever sounds right in the moment, with no obligation to remember it later.
And no, people like this don’t make good allies or partners. Findings be damned. That claim doesn’t survive even a little contact with reality. If she (or he) is slipping a polite, sly blade into Sophie today, you’re next because someone always is. People like this don’t leave wreckage so much as erosion. What’s left is a room full of smaller conversations, thinned relationships, and the faint, sad satisfaction of believing they mattered more than they did.
The mistake most people make with these types is thinking the answer is confrontation, or worse, counter-gossip. That’s amateur hour. You don’t beat indirect aggression head-on. You let it reveal itself for what it is while you stay out of reach.
The move is quiet and cold. You stay three steps back. Clock her game. Deny her leverage. Don’t hand her material. Smile when she smiles. Return warmth with warmth. Offer generosity, even the appearance of friendship. Let her believe you’re inside her circle. People who obsessively curate their reputations are easiest to neutralize when they believe you’re on their side.
Fragile hierarchies breed killers with kind eyes. The smiling assassin polishing her halo and sharpening her knife is dangerous because she actually believes the wound is mercy. It is not.
So next time you see the weapon in the worry, step back before you're the next one cut.