Vicious gossip / rumour-mongering
Generally, to gossip is to disclose information about someone (the victim) to a third party without the victim’s consent, knowing full well that it is none of the third party’s business, and that, given the choice, the victim would not want the information to be disclosed.

Rumours are circulated about the victim, usually to others within the victim’s peer group, usually without the victim’s knowledge. These rumours consist of negative propaganda designed to reduce the victim’s standing within the peer group. In effect, the aggressor attempts to incite the peer group to exclude or otherwise punish the victim. It may have wider consequences. If the victim’s reputation is called into question, he may lose his career or family. In very extreme cases, he may lose his liberty, or even his life.

Some key features of vicious gossip are:

• No formal charges are ever brought to the victim’s attention, no public hearing is ever held.
• Usually the victim is at best only dimly aware of the allegations made against them and so has no obvious means of mounting a defence.
• No evidence is ever presented or examined.
• The aggressor is never called to account, or asked to justify their allegations.

When you disseminate a vicious rumour, it is best to construct it in such a way that it gives your listeners some kind of cognitive pay-off, such as making them laugh. This will not only make them more likely to accept what you say without bothering to examine the evidence, it also gives you a pretext for saying it - I’m telling you this to inform, warn or entertain you, not because I’m persecuting someone.

The purpose of gossip and rumour-mongering is to damage the victim’s reputation, and thus, their other relationships, and consequently, to reduce their status within the peer group. The purpose of this is manifold. Firstly, it undermines the victim’s support base, making it more difficult for them to call upon supporters to defend them. Secondly, others will be less likely to disapprove of the persecution if they feel that the victim deserves it, and so the perpetrator will encounter less dissent from the peer group. Thirdly, it helps to recruit proxy attackers. Some of the onlookers might believe the rumours and be so displeased with the victim that they decide to join in the persecution.

An important feature of vicious gossip is that allegations can be made about someone without them ever having an opportunity to defend themselves. You can make something up about someone and spread it around behind their back, and claim some spurious justification for it. False accusations are not something rare and unusual; they are just an extreme example of vicious gossip designed to destroy social reputations.

The idea is to impugn your victim’s character in every possible way in order to socially isolate them. This has several effects. It will hurt them psychologically. It will reduce others’ level of sympathy and support for them as they obviously ‘deserve’ such treatment. It will help to recruit proxy attackers. In the case of a man, making him look weak, cowardly, immature, emotionally vulnerable, petty-minded and incompetent (in other words, unmanly) is an effective strategy. Alternatively, making him out to be a sexual deviant is another possibility.