Pheme's Theory

Introduction

In general, everyone in the world has heard at least one rumour throughout their life time about them. Pheme’s Theory is a hypothesis based upon the way humans treat and translate information that they are told. This type of information that is translated is commonly known as rumours.

Rumours

Rumours are the type of information told by one person to another that spreads quickly throughout the population of people who are interrelated to the person that the gossip is about.

Most (nearly all) rumours  are news that have some sort of factual knowledge within them. The beginning of all rumours are true, making the only reason that rumours are considered as false knowledge is because they are overly exaggerated in comparison to the absolute veracity.

For example: “James is the size of a mountain.” The truth is that James is not the size of a mountain; however, he may just be a slightly chubby boy. Even though the rumour does not seem true at all, the fact that James is a slightly chubby boy is the truth that has been over exaggerated.

Pheme

Pheme (also known as Ossa) is the Greek goddess of further communication, or messenger of Zeus. She is depicted with feathered wings and a trumpet. This goddess is said to enjoy prying and listening into the affairs of mortals and the gods. Her ability after learning of new information is to gossip on with a  slight whisper into another’s ears, and then this whisper slowly becomes louder and louder. This characteristic of hers causes Pheme to transform from the goddess of gossip into the goddess of rumours. The Roman equivalent of Pheme is Fama.

The Proposition

The proposition of Pheme’s Theory is about how a character accepts a rumour that they have recently heard, and how they translate it. There are many ways to how a new rumour is processed by the individual whom this gossip is about.

Firstly, the individual may become angry or upset because of the rumour due to their perspective of the hearsay. Some of these gossips that are continually brought up before the agent increases the initial emotions that the said individual obtained against the topic.
After a certain amount of time (different depending on each person, but definitely the period of time is considered as ‘long’ for the agent) the character becomes exhausted and simply accepts the teasing or complimenting that this rumour has upon them.
Furthermore, the tittle-tattle that has been spreading around the agent, after being accepted, becomes an idea that unconsciously enters the individual’s mind. At this point, human beings who allows the gossip to enter their minds, dwells on it. The individual thinks to themselves if the rumour is true or not. This doubt that arises in the mind of the agent has the potential to sprout into a thought that may be dubbed as the truth.

However, the second that the individual begins to dwell on whether the rumour is true or not, they themselves become confused on the credibility of this information. The confusion causes the agent to not be able to differentiate the difference between fact and false.

For Example: “James likes Gabby!” Given that James is the agent, his friends continuously spreads this rumour about him and his female friend Gabby. At first he rejects this idea because he believes that they are just friends. However, after a period of time, the teasing becomes so intense that James dies down into an exhausted mode, and simply accepts the fact that he can’t talk over his friends. Later, James thinks to himself about Gabby. He slowly develops feelings for her according to that of the rumour; but, James is unaware of the properties of the gossip (if its true or not). James then acts upon what he feels (which is the rumour, as humans are unable to control their own feelings), complicating his relationship status with Gabby (if they were close friends), or simply just follows the Nightmare.

Conclusion

Gossip is an age old weapon used by many people throughout their life time. A rumour has the ability to affect a person no matter how strong their guard is. Tittle-tattles have the potential ability to destroy an individual without a problem, given that it goes on for a long enough time to influence the agent into believing that the rumour may be true, placing them in a state of confusion. Therefore, even though rumours may seem harmless, their attacking ability is inevitably powerful.