What Would Someone Have to Do to Stop You Being Friends with Them?

Jón Gnarr, the mayor of Reykjavik, dressed in drag at the head of the 2010 Reykjavik Gay Pride. (Photo via)

Jón Gnarr, the mayor of Reykjavík, has said he wants to formally review or break off political and cultural relations with Moscow. He cites the fact that Russia is getting increasingly more homophobic as the reason why he doesn't want to be friends any more. And he has a point: homophobes suck and nobody really wants to be friends with them except for other homophobes, who also suck. The whole thing is just one sucky, bigoted mess of dickheads.

With that in mind, I thought I'd ask some people what someone would have to do for them to drop them as a friend.

Rebecca (left) and Jordan.

Rebecca, student: They would have to hurt me.

VICE: Physically hurt you?
Physically and emotionally.
Jordan, student: I would say that, but some people have fights and scuffles and then it’s still OK. For it to end the friendship they’d have to say something really personal.

What about if they turned out to be massively homophobic?
Jordan: I don’t think I have any…
Rebecca: Yeah, I wouldn’t be friends with them in the first place if they were homophobic.

What if one of your current friends just unleashed a barrage of homophobia out of nowhere?
Rebecca: Well, I guess that’s their opinion and you can’t change it. But I definitely wouldn’t want to hear about it.
Jordan: Yeah, they’d have to keep it to themselves.

So quiet homophobia is OK.

Lottie, music manager: I think being homophobic would definitely be up there. Homophobic or racist or anything like that. There would have to be some culling on Facebook at least.

Have you ever seen anything on Facebook that prompted you to start a cull?
Well, everything did start going a bit BNP after the Woolwich murder. Suddenly everyone was saying, “Stop all these foreigners!” I was a bit surprised that everyone was suddenly a racist.

Yeah, a lot of them started crawling out of the woodwork.
Yeah, there were a lot of really dodgy statuses. I deleted a few people. They had to go.

Alex, sales director: It would have to be pretty bad. I guess stealing a partner would probably do it. Romantic deceit.

Has that ever happened?
Unfortunately it has happened, yeah. And now I’m not friends with them any more. But I think racism and sexism would also be good reasons not to be friends with someone. Although I’d be very surprised if one of my friends turned out to be racist. I might just look at it as a challenge – to change them.

That’s probably more sensible than cutting them loose and letting them be racist all over the place.
Exactly – seeing how racist they can be on their own.

Alex (left) and Ollie.

Alex, barista: Something pretty bad. I think if someone was to be prejudiced in any way I probably wouldn’t bother being friends with them in the first place. Some people are very nice to you at first and then you slowly see that they’re not really straight with you.
Ollie, Alex's brother: When you first meet someone new it can be very exciting, and then you realise they’re not really the person you thought they were.

So being two faced, then?
Alex: There’s one guy in my group of friends who we realised has been playing everyone against each other, so I can’t really be bothered with him any more.

What if it was someone you didn't know already?
If they killed my cat I probably wouldn’t be very happy.

That would be a bit of a weird thing to do unprovoked.
I don’t know what I’d have to do to make them do that. I don’t even have a cat.

So if they made you buy a cat and then killed it?
I’d stop being friends with them.

Sounds about right.

Seb, filmmaker: Leaving washing up in the kitchen until it’s completely covered in mould.

And then it attracted animals? Oh, what if they released an animal into your house?
It depends on what animal it was. I wouldn’t really mind if it was a domestic animal.

A wild animal. What if someone released a cheetah in your house?
I think it would be pretty cool, but realistically that would make me pretty angry.

So, in general, having a cheetah would be fun, but logistically it would be a nightmare to have around?
A chimpanzee would also be bad.

Surely it could help you out with stuff?
Yeah, but I think when they get older they’re quite dangerous. They’re cute for a bit, then once they get to about seven they’ll rip your face off.

Previously - Do You Agree with the Greenpeace Activists Climbing the Shard?