The Best Piece of Unsolicited Advice You’ve Ever Received

It’s the freakin’ weekend, baby, and you made it—cause for celebration, I’d say. What’s not joyous, however, is the fact that some nerd probably gave you unsolicited advice at some point in the last five days. People love to share their opinion with strangers, even when it is wrong and stupid and dumb. Sometimes, however, they’re on to something. Take Harry Styles, formerly of One Direction fame. When I was having a particularly miserable day, he launched a website to promote a forthcoming single, DoYouKnowWhoYouAre.com, meant to generate positive affirmations to strangers. It’s not advice in the traditional sense, per se, but I took it as a sign. Remember that you are marvelous, and wow, your day has totally turned around. That might sound pathetic (I never claimed to be cool) but surely you’ve been in a situation where someone has offered up some guidance you didn’t want, but learned a lot from. I want to hear about that. Tell me about that in the comments below.

And now for last week’s winners. These are the best of the best tales, the glorious ways you broke up with a frenemy.

dunnaeknow, I’m putting you at the top because people could really learn from you:

This is pretty innocuous in the grand scheme of things but I had had it with a “friend” who took joy in trying to diminish me publicly online. I sent him a private message that read “You know, it’s been years since I’ve had a pleasant experience with you and I don’t think we need to be friends anymore.”

Short, sweet, and devoid of any ammo his catty ass could have used against me. It’s really not that hard to cut people out of your life! Everyone should do it more.

Damn, kitten with a scrip:

1996: Frenemy and I stayed up all night on coke. At one point she tearfully confessed that she’d fucked my boyfriend shortly after he and I had started dating – not because she liked him, but because she was “jealous.”

I stayed calm. Told her our friendship meant more than some stupid guy, blahblahblah. The next day I put a plan into action – every time she asked my opinion, I’d give her a bad one. (“No, those jeans don’t give you a muffin top!”). When she finally got a terrible pixie cut (“You’d look so cute with short hair!”) I laughed at her, told her that now she was as hideous on the outside as she was on the inside, and ended the friendship. And, yes, I broke up with the boyfriend, too.

Sadfacerealsadfaced, save his girlfriend! Dear lord:

TL&DR: gave best friend money. they ghost. it turns out to be the best purchase I’ve ever made.

My best friend from middle school until shortly after college. He started giving off creeper vibes during college and it got worse from there.

I had a decent paying job and he was (supposedly) still looking for work. He asked to borrow a couple thousand dollars until he got back on his feet. He disappeared from the face of the earth and I was upset about losing the money.

Flash forward to a decade or so later: I randomly run into him on the street and we agreed to grab coffee. He has no job, his longtime girlfriend (who he hates and cheats on constantly, had domestic abuse charges filed against him, and has two kids with) pays for everything and spends his time watching alt-right/deep state conspicuous videos on YouTube and smoking pot. Even seeing him with his neck beard and unkempt look I didn’t want to believe he went full incel. Then he started to talk.

I threw down more than enough money to pay for our drinks and noped the fuck out of there.

Best $2020 I ever spent.

veraps, this is a nightmare? Blocking is grounds for a frenemy breakup, too, I believe:

No cool frenemy dumping tale, I’m afraid. Just a cautionary tale about work “friends” and social networking. I recommend avoiding both.

A coworker I had started hanging out with a lot confided some very personal stuff. I reciprocated. I understood what she told me to be in confidence, and never breathed a word to anyone else. Found out much later the bish almost immediately gossiped to other coworkers about my confidences. That was a shock to my soul-like being violated.

She then became weirdly competitive and acted like she wanted to subsume my private life. If I took up a hobby like knitting or watercolor, SHE took up the same, posting pics of her half-assed attempts on Facebook . I took up kayaking, and SHE started kayaking and posted rather melodramatically about it. I got a kitten and posted a couple of cute pics on FB. SHE immediately adopted a rescue dog and (via FB) posted dozens of pics and long narratives abt struggles with cruel neighbors who objected to the barking and her tendency to leave her dog’s waste in the shared yard overnight.

The final straw was her tracking down my best friend (a man) via social networking and pretty much fucking him into submission. She’s attractive, and he’s a nerdy guy who didn’t know what hit him. She then threw a party where most of our mutual friends were invited (not me, of course.)

After that, I blocked her on FB, and she made my work life fairly unpleasant, going out of her way to humiliate and undercut me. I eventually got another job, and my male friend finally realized she was psycho and broke up. Six months later, I get a follow request from her on Instagram. It’s unfortunate that Instagram doesn’t have an option for this kind of request like “Go Away. Forever.”

Maxine Floeffler Was On The Call, you should move as soon as you can:

There is a person in my building with whom I was once very close, but turns out that they, probably mostly out of boredom and general not having a life, not really malice, decided to become a behind-my-back shit-stirrer.

No bad news goes unreported where I live, so word started filtering back to me.

I am still “friendly” with them, and I can’t break up with them until one of us moves, but I exact my revenge in very passive aggressive ways. This is not really like me and it’s a skill I have had to learn.

In the elevator: “I know! I never see you any more! You have something on your face. No, a little higher. Over a little bit. There, that looks a little better.”

Walking through the lobby: “I know! We never see each other any more! Did you hurt yourself? Oh no, I…you seem to be limping a little bit…”

Werewolf Bar Mitzvah, you know I’m a sucker for a short and sweet Pissing Contest entry. Oorah!:

I joined the Marines and deployed half a world away. Take that, mom!

FleshyDumpling, this one hurt, and she sucks:

I up and moved out a few months before our lease was up because I couldn’t be in a room with her without having anxiety attack. I picked up extra shifts at work and continued to pay my half of the rent/utilities on top of the bills for the new place because I wasn’t a shitty person.

She proceeded to tell our mutual friend group that I left her high and dry, that I tried stealing from her, that I’d fuck my boyfriend in front of her, that I’d hit on all the guys she liked. She really made sure to alienate me from every mutual friend. Oh, she also fucked my creepy stalker ex thinking it’d rile me up (It didn’t because he was a creep and there was a reason I dumped him). Gotta admit that it piled onto the trust issues I already had and making new friends is next to impossible for me now.

She later moved in with the same group of girls that alienated me and pulled similar shit. Some of them reached out to me after the fact to reconnect. I found out she moved overseas to teach English to kids before getting fired for trashing said kids on twitter.