Gossip is uncensored, unmediated, unfiltered, peer-to-peer communication. The term describes the method, not the subject, of communication. In pre-revolutionary France gossip was anarchistic in the sense that it grew and thrived outside of hierarchies and beyond the reach of the state, not that it necessarily advocated or caused the overthrow of the king, although it certainly did contribute. Unmediated and decentralized, gossip was anarchistic in structure if not in content.