Anyone who cares about celebrities also cares about the people who report on them. But the reason people care who she is isn’t just abject curiosity; it’s because we know that anonymity gives you power. Information that goes unpublished can be, and has been in our history, used to blackmail or extort people. We want to know who the person behind Gossip Girl is because without knowing who is spreading the gossip, we cannot be sure whether to trust it, much less know that person’s biases. Even though gossip from anonymous sources can reveal more about our world and the people in it than bylined
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