The eternal art of gossip: from Versailles to the kiss cam, nothing has changed. But do you really believe that gossip was born with Instagram?

Okay, let's get to the point. Last Wednesday, Coldplay concert in Boston. The kiss cam captures two people: he's in his fifties, gray hair, she's blonde. They're in a tender embrace. Then they realize they're being filmed and do something rather curious—they hide. She covers her face, he disappears from the frame. Chris Martin from the stage makes a funny statement: "Look at these two... either they're together or they're just shy." The audience laughs. The end. But no, because the internet never forgives.

In two days, it turns out he's Andy Byron, CEO of a startup worth more than a billion, and she's Kristin Cabot, who—surprise twist—heads HR at the same company . Both married. Both now unemployed, because Byron was placed on leave and the company opened an investigation. And here begins the chorus of outrage. "There goes the digital pillory!" "Privacy is dead!" "Social media is destroying everything!" Excuse me. Do you really think gossip started with Instagram? Because if so, we need to tell you about some ladies who used to live in Versailles who would make you look like amateurs.

The real queens of gossip

So, let's put it this way. While we get excited, outraged, scandalized (and so on) over a thirty-second video, there were seventeenth-century French ladies who had turned gossip into an art . We're not kidding. It was literally their job. Take Madame de Maintenon . Okay, that name doesn't mean anything to you, but she was Louis XIV's secret second wife. She didn't need a smartphone to build her spy network: a whispered conversation behind a fan during a ball was enough to spread news that would have made WikiLeaks pale: she knew exactly when to leak that minister so-and-so was screwing the secretary's wife, and when it was better to make the current favorite believe that she had fallen from grace.

She was a true professional: today we have communications consultants, they had her. The Duchess of Burgundy was even worse. In her apartments, she organized what today we would call "gossip meetups." But they weren't just chats among friends over drinks. This was serious business. They decided who should be the next victim, what scandal to invent, how to get the information to the right ears. It was teamwork that required almost obsessive precision. The only difference from today? It took at least two days to ruin someone. Now, two hours are enough. But the rest—the malice, the precision, the sadistic pleasure in watching someone fall—was identical. In fact, perhaps they were even better at it than us.

When memes were porn books

But wait, because the best is yet to come. In the 18th century, there were these guys called "pamphleteers"—basically the gossip bloggers of the time, except instead of writing online, they published clandestine pamphlets. Stuff that mixed politics and pornography with a nonchalance that would put even the most shameless YouTuber to shame. Their masterpiece? "Les Amours de Charlot et Toinette." Translated: "The Loves of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette." Except it wasn't an authorized biography. It was a kind of 18th-century version of Fifty Shades of Grey, where the two royals were portrayed as sex maniacs, complete with anatomical descriptions and invented dialogue. And the crazy thing is, it worked . There's a very famous historian (and by historian we mean a serious scholar, not someone who writes online), Darnton, who has shown how these pamphlets contributed more to the French Revolution than all of Voltaire's beautiful speeches put together.

Why? Simple: people preferred reading about supposed royal orgies to political philosophy. Just as today we prefer reading Byron and Cabot to reading the Astronomer's balance sheet. But pamphleteers also had a good sense of timing: when there was a political crisis, they knew which sex scandal to unleash. Marie Antoinette unpopular because she was Austrian? Here are the stories about her lesbian relationships with the ladies of the court. Louis XVI showing weakness? He was immediately painted as a cuckold who couldn't satisfy his wife. It was hate marketing, three centuries ahead of its time. And we think we invented fake news.

Rome had already invented Twitter

But if we want to find the true ancestors of social media, we have to go even further back. Rome, the 16th century. There was this statue, Pasquino, which became the first social network in history. People posted anonymous notes full of vicious jokes about the pope, cardinals, and nobles: it was literally Twitter carved in marble, and the "pasquinate" were memes ante litteram. Short, mean, anonymous. They spread around Rome faster than official news. Pope Adrian VI (who evidently had zero sense of humor) tried to have the statue thrown into the Tiber. They responded with a new pasquinate: "If you throw us in the river, we'll scream even louder, like frogs." They had practically invented trolling five centuries before the internet, complete with anonymity, biting irony, and virality. A joke about a corrupt cardinal would go viral in Rome in a day. Just as today, a meme can travel the world in an hour.

But do you really think that everything was more polite before?

So when we hear all this outrage over Byron being fired for a hug, we have to laugh . Excuse me, what did your grandparents read? "Confidenze" and "Grand Hotel" were full of vicious gossip. "Oggi" reported on celebrity affairs with the same viciousness as any tabloid. And the 1980s tabloids? They were nothing like gossip bloggers. Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons, the two queens of Hollywood gossip of the 1940s, could destroy an actor's career with a single line in the paper. And they did. Regularly. Often for reasons far more stupid than a poorly filmed hug.

Bette Davis hated them so much she said, "I'd rather kiss a cobra than compliment Hedda Hopper." Yet, no one was talking about "media pillorying." The point is this: gossip has always existed. It's just that before it was a privilege. You had to know how to read, have money for newspapers, be in the right circles. Today it's democratic. Anyone with a smartphone can be a paparazzi. Anyone with Instagram can spread gossip. And this is annoying, not because it's become more vicious, but because it's no longer controllable.

It used to be that only journalists could ruin someone. Today, any girl going to a concert can get a billionaire CEO fired without even meaning to . It's the democratization of power through gossip. And the powerful don't like it at all . How Not to Handle a Scandal (A Beginner's Manual) The funniest thing is that Byron and Cabot did everything wrong. Like, if the ladies of Versailles had written a manual on how to handle a scandal, they would have broken every single rule. First basic rule: never hide. Those who hide automatically admit guilt. Much better to face it head on, perhaps with a joke, than to disarm everyone.

Madame de Pompadour, when rumors of her affairs (probably fabricated) circulated, didn't issue press releases. She threw even more lavish parties and invited the very people who were spreading the rumors. It was a classy way of saying, "I don't care about your gossip." Byron and Cabot, on the other hand: hidden, silent, company press releases. They let others control the story. If Madame de Maintenon were alive, she'd slap them for their amateurish handling of the crisis. The only real difference. Do you know what's truly new about digital gossip? It's not the malice. It's the amnesia. The ladies of Versailles built scandals that lasted years. Decades.

Madame du Barry is still famous today primarily for the gossip about her. Oscar Wilde is immortal thanks in part to his scandal. Byron and Cabot? In six months, no one will remember them, because in the daily overdose of digital scandals, even the best gossip becomes fast food. Quick, cheap, forgettable. It's as if we've ruined even the art of slander. At least our ancestors, when they ruined someone, did it properly. With style. For eternity. Perhaps we should take a leaf out of their book. If we must gossip—and we always will, it's beyond us—at least let's do it properly.

Let's create gossip that stands the test of time, because as Oscar Wilde—who knew a thing or two about scandals—said, "Gossip is the only thing that makes modern society bearable." And he was right. Except that he at least knew how to transform his own downfall into legend. Byron and Cabot, on the other hand, will remain a footnote in the never-ending history of human gossip. Which, when you think about it, is almost worse than getting fired.