王盈方醫師瘋狂之旅 Dr Yvonne Wang's Blabberings

When people back chat, you really don't know whether the intention is benign or malignant, or whether there's any intention at all other than to have something to entertain their friends about.

If say there's a back chat about me, I would say to the back chatters: “If there's a concern, I'd prefer people to say it directly to me. What's the point of back chatting? A direct address of concern would be taken in as benign and a show of care by an observant person, but back chats tend to be taken as malignant preformed assumptions.”

Back chatters may say that “oh, but I don't know this person well enough to approach him/her directly about it”. If that's the case, they shouldn't really be saying stuff about someone they don't know well in the first place. And if they're seriously concerned they should make sure they address this only to someone whom they're very sure is a good friend of the backchat subject.