Ah...sorry lads! couldn't tell on mobile :-)
Come on, we can do better than that. This isn't an ol' boys club.
"Guys" is not any more gender neutral than "Lads" (they both are often used in a gender-neutral way, but they're etymologically male). "Folks" is what I personally use if I specifically want something gender-neutral, but "lads" is definitely appropriate if the author is speaking to men.
Which brings me back to "this is a lot of noise for nothing".
But it was a short comment intended to convey "Oops! Sorry. My bad." So you basically replied to an apology with a suggestion that the apology had committed some greater sin.
My feeling is that probably falls under the heading "Throwing the baby out with the bathwater." I don't think it qualifies as a Best Practice for improving the social climate on some metric or other.
That's not intended to lecture you. I'm just trying to make conversation on a topic I find interesting. Given the nature of the beast, I'm having very mixed feelings about commenting at all.
I don't know if itsbenlee is Irish or in Ireland.