How to End an Online Friendship

It's happened: a great friendship is ruined by some huge conflict, a flaring up of some disagreement, or even a villainous word or deed that destroys all trust between two formerly involved people. Ending a friendship can be a delicate matter, but it's sometimes made easier if the friendship was mainly an "online" one. The process of removing yourself from a friendship depends a lot on whether you were real-time companions, or if the relationship was only through bits and bytes.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderate

1. One easy way to get rid of a friend? Delete them from your MySpace account. The MySpace service, now super-popular around the world, was invented specifically with a "friend-status" feature. The essential structure of the MySpace profile includes "adding" and "subtracting" friends, and sometimes the quickest way to end an online friendship is the MySpace drop.
2. You may want to send an email to your friend detailing the reasons for your change. Be tactful and consider the fallout that may come from an email. Remember, unlike other forms of communication, email is a permanent record.
3. Change chat room addresses. If your friendship was based on chat rooms, you may have to alter your venues a little. Either vacate the chat spaces that you haunted with your ex-friend, or change your handle.
4. Take references to your friend off all of your web pages, profiles, etc. Otherwise, people will be confused and may make references to or assumptions about your friendship based on outdated material. Look for your former enthusiastic endorsements of this person: you'll want to get rid of those.
5. Stop contact. The best way to end a friendship may be a "cold-turkey" approach. Otherwise, emotional issues may come to the forefront. Try dropping all contact with your former friend and gauge whether it was the appropriate response, or if other steps may be needed.

Tips & Warnings

• Avoid "bad press." Think about what will result from each of your actions. Flaming or confronting the person may have negative effects on you or others. Try a minimal approach and avoid unnecessary confrontations.