When a Chief Minister has a “new lover” or a “pending divorce,” the serf’s world ignites. Not because they care about policy or governance, but because they deal in The Voyeur’s Currency.
For the serf, whose own life is a series of approved checkboxes, the “scandal” of a powerful individual is a proxy for the agency they have suppressed in themselves. They gossip not to understand, but to punish. They use the leader’s private life as a baseline to reaffirm their own miserable compliance as “virtue.”
If the Chief Minister can’t maintain the “proper” image, the serf feels a momentary surge of superiority—the only power they will ever know.