i have been talking of girl talk hell for some years, having been immersed in several different instances of it in that time, and even before. i just didn't know, before then, that it was girl talk hell, and, when i complained, depending whom i was complaining to, i likely just identified individuals by name, or generalized anonymously: "a group of women situated near my workspace at the office."
(i can remember one instance since the coining of "girl talk hell" that i complained - somewhat less discreetly than wonted - of whom-is-now-subsumed-in-the-archetype-of-the-queen by name: "I can't stand another moment of exposure to the inane rantings of Givenname Patronymic!" i exclaimed to a GTH sympathizer, with exasperated-villain-grasping-claw-handed gestures and all, outside the bathroom just about the same time a . . . person who had some social dealings with Givenname Patronymic walked around the corner, and i was mortified; but me and Givenname Patronymic had some friction of our own anyway, beyond, and yet strangely entangled with, the normal confines of girl talk hell. i determined to try to be more circumspect;)
prior to that time, i had just thought GTH to be the normal behavior of, say, junior-high-school girls on, say, the schoolbus. alas that i have since learned it to be something approaching normative among even otherwise well-mannered professional adults.
(NB: recall that, as girl talk hell is a degenerate implementation of the Congress of Girlfriends, it must be a faux- . . . sorority (?) . . . of individuals, who are not confidantes, publicly discussing intimate matters but, rather than representing their own views, informed by some collective notion of general girly-ness of the caliber and values of television commercials and celebrity magazines, as though they were guests on The View, and exhibited by few, if any, of the individual members present, on their own or among their respective CoGs, except, perhaps, ironically. . . so, the situation must not be one in which girlfriends can congregate by choice -- i'm pretty sure that, even when its broadcast sounds similar to the that of GTH, the Congress of Girlfriends must remain sacrosanct)
i started this post about the Queen of Girl Talk Hell, but then the foregoing happened. now i don't know if i'm up to all the delightfully bilious and tangential explications i had contemplated . . . emitting . . . when i initially sat down to post, having only now gotten through those that just arose while i was trying to dash out some preamble.
sometimes, members of a present, prior or future girl talk hell are among the apparently appreciative audience of some of the ridiculous tales from that dreaded zone, which makes the call for some discretion a question of something more than just my own discretion.
suffice it to say that there is always a Queen of Girl Talk Hell, a prime mover. around whom the phenomenon coalesces, or from whom it proceeds. she is self evident. if you're not sure you're facing an actual outbreak of girl talk hell, look for the queen, and you'll know. she's probably the loudest, and likely tends to interrupt her interlocutrices to [claim to] agree with what they're trying to say, and otherwise turn the conversation back toward herself.