6 Ways You Can Reject People Without Them Finding Out

Never reject people in the old-fashioned, say-it-to-my-face kind of way—unless you crave social and professional ruin. Do you, a top performer, want to waste time tending to tears of people you’re unwilling to love? Granting consolation massages to men you have no interest in reblogging? Attending dreary tea parties at your baby cousin’s dollhouse? Reject needy people outright and they’ll pursue you with greater gusto. You don’t want that attention. If aspiring supplicants were to follow you more closely, they’d start to catalog your weird habits—your neurotic muscular twitches, your bodega ice cream runs, your sketchy internet sleuths. Whether at a boardroom meeting or in the throes of a thunderous climax, you must maintain a disciplined front. Here’s how to stop the paupers from encroaching upon your luncheons:

1. Become a woman

To master the skill of invisible rejection, become a woman. (Already a woman? Continue to do that.) From a young age women are subjected to a barrage of solicitations, some overt (“Hey, babe”), some insidious (“Wanna help me with my math project, poolside?”). Ever since Eve told Adam, “Not tonight, sweetie, my shin has this weird bump on it,” women have been split-testing palatable ways to dismiss unintelligent life.

If you’re alive, you’ve been rejected by a woman without your knowing. Has a woman at a bar ever told you that she needs to find her friends? Rejected! Has a woman ever told you she’s too tired to get drinks? Rejected! Has she ever asked you for directions? Rejected! (Read between the lines, boys. When a lady asks for directions, she’s saying she wants to increase the distance between the two of you.)

2. Use text messaging for all communication

When talking on the phone, you must evade attention grabs in real time. But sometimes real time happens too fast to fend off happy hour invites, especially if the value leech is charming. Insist on texting! Send two emoji texts for every one text of disinterest to ensure that the rejection occurs at a subconscious level. A string of emojis can take even the most tech-savvy eleven-year-old a lifetime to decode. By the time your pursuer understands the emoji sequence, you’ll have moved to a different city, died of natural causes, or become less physically attractive.

3. End every rejection with an exclamation point!

Exclamation points mask disdain with enthusiasm and positivity!

• “Sorry, I’m really busy right now.” = You don’t matter.

• “Sorry, I’m really busy right now!” = I’m unapologetically psyched on life and hope you’ll one day join me on this higher plane of existence!

See the difference? Faced with an exclamation point, a submissive won’t realize his low value. He’ll be content merely to know you, a person of influence, one who adds élan to everyday evasions.

Copywriters employ the same strategy to pimp humdrum products. With a single brushstroke, the exclamatory pointillist transforms a dull sentence about shampoo or online poker or a Connecticut vacation into a clickable masterwork.

Shout, obfuscate! Exclamation points give craven grovellers hope that you’ll grant them coffee dates. Feed them the fantasy of introspecting and life-goaling with you over award-winning Americanos, but keep meetup negotiations abstract. If the needy persist, demand that they PayPal you an appearance fee, then exclaim that you have suffered an attack of gout (or another historically high-status disease).

4. Always be at the gym

Being at the gym is a great excuse for a text message response gap of several days. In Manhattan, exclusive gyms resemble boutique furniture shops or space portals, places where the uncultured and cosmically insignificant are unwelcome. Bottom feeders won’t be up your ass in these sanctums of bulk. Luxuriate in the steam room, guzzle green juice, and yield to the guiding hand of your Venezuelan trainer beneath the squat rack.

It’s now socially acceptable to spend a three-day gymcation at David Barton to firm and tone your hammies, to sweat out your splenetic core. Employers understand that you become a more clinical and chipper sales bully when your butt is elite. Powerful hip adduction means a powerful Mind-Gina. Use this current cultural allowance for biceptual exploration to your advantage: Burrow in Coach Enrique’s musclebound bosom to fob off your fanbase.

5. Promise them paradise

Memorize these lines: “No, I did not reject you. In fact, I consider you my closest friend. One day we will live together on a private island in the Caribbean and bathe in cocojito jacuzzis. However, until that day comes, I need you to not talk to me, ever, especially in front of people I want to impress.”

6. Create your own internment camp

Inferiors are status-obsessed beggars who will scrounge for small opportunities to hobnob with winners. Capitalize on their will to mingle by hiring them as interns. Promise them days of big business deals and nights of bottle service on boats. Flee to Dubai. Your new staffers, not wanting to screw up their dream gig, will be hesitant to contact you. Repeat as necessary: accrue followers, split to increasingly remote and exclusive locales. Prosper, weep.

Today internships are often remote, work-from-home gigs. Hire cyberstalkers to follow you on Twitter and to bump your posts on Reddit. When these digital hounds request Skype or Snapchat seshes, change your identity. “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog” holds true not just for shy, pseudo-experts, but for you, the unrepentant lifestyle tyrant.

Plebs will keep trying to pilfer a chunk of your success; you’ll keep doling out indiscernible rejections. Kowtow to your groupies and risk financial ruin, emotional overcommitment, sexual embarrassment or, most disempowering of all, a sense of humility.