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Comment by racer-v | Hacker News Reader

I agree that not every person who can't or won't accept your apology is toxic. My advice is: when a person you don't know well claims to have been offended by you, look for signs that the person just wants a fight. If that's the case, try to remove yourself before any more damage happens.

It's natural to want to apologize if you think you've hurt someone's feelings. Just be aware that some people are addicted to creating drama, and that may have nothing to do with you.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karpman_drama_triangle

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Yeah this is just a bizarre and selfish way of treating others. If you wronged someone, apologize. It has nothing to do with whether they will accept it, and certainly not with how well you know them.

Say you were texting and killed a kid crossing the street. You don't know his family and the mother will not accept your apology. Perhaps she even goes on TV crying about the person who killed her baby.

There are quite many cowardly individuals in America who would use legal reasons as an excuse not to apologize in a situation like that, and probably even a handful who would double down on this pathology and tell themselves the woman is "looking for drama". This is sad.

Who benefits when you try to force an unwanted apology on someone who doesn't want to be contacted by you? Consider whether you're just trying to assuage your own guilty conscience at the further expense of the victim.

I didn't mean to suggest the person would not want contact.

An apology doesn't itself assuage a guilty conscience, it is just an acknowledgement of the debt created by the wrong. A fake apology may be worse than saying nothing, but the prevalence of fake apologies is no excuse not to do the right thing.

It's a data point that many crime victims ask not to be contacted by the perpetrator. Again I'm asking you whose benefit this apology is for. If it's for your own benefit, maybe it's not warranted.

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