Usually the person that has more friends is a friendly person that people walk away from feeling good about themselves or feeling they were welcome in some way to participate and engage. The KEY word in what I just said is FEEL. Often that's why people gossip. They are often looking for imperfections they can find in others so they don't have to feel so bad about their own imperfections or insecure feelings or fears or hurts. Sometimes gossip can bring some kind of answer to "see, I knew there was something I did not like about that person" or "no wonder why that person left me FEELING weird or uncomfortable in some way". And, yet, what it can mean is the person gossiping doesn't want others to like a person because of how that person makes them feel too. And then there are times where a person gossips because they are looking for attention and often people tend to be drawn to gossip even if it's just to debunk it. And sometimes it's just to have something to talk about.