Dear Ask Anything,

What is a polite way to cut someone out of my life?

Sincerely,
Fed up with friend

Fortunately for you, FUWF, with the presence of social networking sites, this process gets easier and easier.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone through my Facebook friend list and deleted people that, a.) I’ve talked to once in my life and will never see again, b.) I went to high school with and will never see again, and c.) I’ve talked to once in high school and will never see again.

In all of these circumstances , the chance of running into these people later in life is 0.00001 percent. I can live with that, and you probably can too.

And it’s easy because there is literally no emotional connection between you and that person -you’re just in that weird vortex of stalking.

Now if he or she maybe once meant something to you as a person, then unfortunately, there isn’t a polite way to get rid of them.

The only way to get away with it with no hard feelings and no awkward run-ins is to sit down with them (or, for you non-face-to-facers, a letter; or, for you Information Age purists, a Facebook message), and say, “Hey, I think we have a mutual apathy for one another. I honestly can’t think of any possible reasons why we should continue to be friends. We should part ways without hurting each other’s precious feelings.”

If this person feels the same, it’ll be the cleanest of breaks.

However, if this person has some sort of weirdo interest in you that you just can’t return, no matter what you do, it’s going to be messy.

The good news, though, is that it’ll only be messy for, like, 15 minutes, and then you can both move on in hopefully opposite directions, and forget all of this ever happened.