The Gospel According To Marites Is chismis about them, or about us?

Marites is not just gossip. She is the mirror in which we catch our own reflection, flawed and fascinating.

- AA PATAWARAN

Picture this: It's 2020, the middle of lockdown, and the world is on mute. No dinners, no drinks, no office gossip at lunchbreak. Just you, your phone, and the infinite swipe. Out of nowhere, she shows up, eagerly tapping on your screen. "Mare, ano ang latest?" And just like that, Marites is in the room.

She's not new. Gossip has always had a face, even if it didn't always have a name. In English, the word once meant something quite different. Gossip comes from godsibb, an Old English word for "godparent," a person bound by trust, affection, and kinship. Over the centuries, the meaning slipped, from intimacy to idle chatter, from trusted confidante to tattler-in-chief. The fall from grace of godsibb reminds us that gossip was never just a pastime but a person, constantly reinventing herself to suit the times.

Some say she first appeared in the small-town tambayan, where neighbors gathered at dusk to trade updates under the glow of a single street lamp. Others place her in the early '80s, when landlines with long spiral cords stretched across kitchens, and family phones became hotlines of intrigue. By the '90s, she was a staple at beauty parlors and panaderias, thriving on hair-spray fumes and the smell of freshly baked pandesal. She was always there, but it was only in the early 2020s, when TikTok and Facebook turned boredom into an Olympic sport, that she was christened. A pandemic baby, born of memes, she went viral and never looked back.

The name gave her power. Suddenly, gossip had a brand. You didn't have to say your neighbor was a chatterbox, or that your cousin was nosy, or that your officemate had nothing better to do. You just said "Marites," and the whole country knew exactly what you meant. Overnight, she became the patron saint of coffee breaks, a shorthand for the grapevine, the whistleblower, the busybody, the walking news feed.