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Comment by DoreenMichele | Hacker News Reader

I don't know. Years ago, I was on an email list and I did a lot of sincere public apologizing, in part because the internet was younger, so we didn't have a lot of stuff worked out. We were just stumbling our way forward as best we could.

And the end result was that I became everyone's bitch. People would intentionally pick on me and be ugly to me and when it went sideways, the group as a whole would go "There she goes again!" and blame the whole thing on me and expect me to apologize and kiss everyone's ass.

I am much less free with public apologies than I used to be, though I am still equally willing to own my actions (a la "I did x. That didn't turn out well.")

There are some people in the world just looking for someone to blame and if they get it stuck in their warped tiny little minds for some reason that you are a good person to blame, good luck escaping their shit. Such people are a case of "The only winning move is not to play." and, unfortunately, you tend to find that out after the fact because they have burned you and will not stop burning you, no matter how above-board, high-minded blah blah blah you handle the situation.

Some people are just hell-bent on proving "No one is actually that good" because they have baggage, so trying to do the right thing consistently just makes you a target of their shit and they really need therapy, but aren't getting it.

Such people seem to be rather poor at letting things go and my impression is some of them will cyberstalk you for years after you try to leave whatever situation originally put you in contact with them.

(Edit: No, this wasn't about my gender. This detail has already been addressed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25087829)

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To preface, we're talking about people with jackasses-tendencies here. Normal, well-adjusted people don't like to make their colleagues feel bad.

But as you say, it's also been my experience that apology and... "ownership"(?) are two very different things in American (Southern) culture.

"I'm sorry I did X" seems to signal weakness and invite criticism, if people are already so inclined.

"I did X. It wasn't the best approach / it was wrong / etc" seems to be perceived as stronger, while also taking responsibility for the mistake.

My gut says bullies key to subconscious signs of weakness, and the former is interpreted as such. While the latter projects subconscious strength, even while communicating conscious guilt.

We're all just apes in the end.

> To preface, we're talking about people with jackasses-tendencies here. Normal, well-adjusted people don't like to make their colleagues feel bad.

Exactly this, and one of the things I eventually realised is you have to simply ignore the jackasses.

Realising that face to face these people are most likely not terribly formidable is certainly helpful but the main thing is to learn not to give a s### what they think regardless. This isn't to say you should ignore everyone, or become proud, but that you should recognise peoples' behaviour for what it is and respond appropriately, which might include ignoring it entirely.

> My gut says bullies key to subconscious signs of weakness, and the former is interpreted as such.

Without wanting to get too Homelander about it and, of course, I never would, but after a number of years of strength training it's always nice to know that if push came to shove you could probably snap the bullies in half with your bare hands. More seriously, being in physically good shape is highly underrated: it fundamentally changes who you are, and will change the way you think about difficult or challenging situations, making you more confident and capable of dealing with them. I can't really explain why this happens, but it certainly does - at least in my experience (one data point, I will grant you).

There are situations where it doesn't work to just ignore the jackasses. Though, yes, these people are jackasses and I tend to be going "Can you get therapy already and leave me the hell alone?" (or "Can you drop dead already, you asshole." if it goes on long enough/gets bad enough).

Not starting with "I am sorry" looks like a good advice - framing matters. Start with description of what happened and how it went sideways, end up with regretting the harm caused - by the time you get there, you'll be perceived as a person who understands the situation and its implications, and is in control of it, and thus will be more inclined to accept the apology and move on.

As a Canadian, I was quick to realize that the mere word "sorry" has a different meaning to some people down south. In Canada I'll just say it casually to mean a polite "hope I'm not troubling you" or "sorry that happened to you", and never thought of it as immediately declaring responsibility let alone fragility. But in the US, I've been pounced on for a casual use of that word, as if I'd announced failure and that I owed something to the other party.

So I much appreciate what you're saying here.

As a Canadian, you're missing out on the other critical half of the 'sorry'.

You step on my foot. I look at you, and say "sorry", and pull my foot away. You abashedly also "sorry" and we move on.

Am I apologizing? Hardly! The full sentence is, "Sorry, did you just actually step on my foot, what the hell?" and your reply is "Sorry, yes, I did do that, didn't mean to, apologies". Then the problem is solved and we move on.

> But in the US, I've been pounced on for a casual use of that word, as if I'd announced failure and that I owed something to the other party.

It is precisely the opposite in circumstances like the above!

> Am I apologizing? Hardly! The full sentence is, "Sorry, did you just actually step on my foot, what the hell?"

At least in the UK, that's not the full sentence, or it could be, but only with a change in tone ('SOrrY?!') - to me it's more like 'Oops my foot was in your way I think, so sorry'. (Said of course before you have a chance to think 'no hang on, I wasn't in the way, you weren't looking, this isn't my fault'.)

Your interpretation is normal in Canada too.

Commonwealth of [apologetic] Nations..!

So basically an "excuse me what the fuck"?

No, an instinctive apology as though you were at fault, even though you (to a bystander, or in hindsight) obviously weren't. It's not sarcastic.

Yes, that's the gist of it - couched in more politeness, but the tone says it all. Perhaps lost on non-native English speakers, of course; but then, that's half the charm, the built in plausible deniability.

Are you from the pacific northwest by chance? My wife is and she will constantly apologize for things that are 100% the other person's fault. It really bugs me, especially because the other person will some times say, "oh it's ok" (as they are accepting her admission of guilt) and I usually say something like, "Honey, that wasn't your fault, you shouldn't be apologizing."

On the flip side, when someone runs in to me or steps on my foot or something, I'll usually just look at them, giving them an opportunity to politely say, "Sorry about that." My wife tells me that it is extremely rude when I do that, but that feels normal to me.

I'm really wondering if where we grew up is playing a big part here?

Oregonian here. I joke that we're the Canadians of the United States.

"Sorry" in regular conversation is a social nicety, very different from a sincere apology, even though the sincere apology may incorporate that same word.

I feel the same way as you... also curious what others think on this topic.

> I'm really wondering if where we grew up is playing a big part here?

I don't want to repeat it here, but I mentioned this in another part of the thread.

Half of my family is outside the United States, and I often use "sorry" in a similar context. For me it's cultural rather than regional because I'm in the southwest--and now that I think about it, I've never given much thought to people giving a non-apology "sorry." It could be there's a bit of a cultural mismatch here since there's an air force base nearby, and we often have people from the Commonwealth here (UK, Canada, Australia, etc).

I'm actually not sure what sort of answer that is now that I think about it.

Greek here. The only way we use "sorry" is "I have done something to hurt you and I apologize in earnest".

For lighter things, like bumping into you, we might say "sorry" (as in, the English word), which sounds more casual and not as severe.

As a Briton, I sympathise. It's easy to say and then feel foolish by the reaction of the counter-party - that you've made something bigger of it than it is, or that you've inadvertently (been considered to having had) admitted guilt to something serious!

'Sorry' to me ranges from 'Excuse me', through 'ha-ha we both reached for that/side-stepped in the same direction at the same time', all the way of course to the serious 'I regret and apologise for what I have done' that it (solely) means elsewhere.

On the flip side though, American's are constantly telling me that I'm 'so welcome' when they don't mean it (or perhaps because they're used to 'thank you' having similar infrequency and sincerity to 'sorry'?) - so I think we're even. :)

The American equivalent to the "sorry" you're used to is, at least in the Midwest, "oop" or sometimes more like "ope" depending on accent. It's more of an utterance than a word but it means the same thing.

I'm not denying it expressing the same, but I would precede my 'sorry' with the same utterance.

(And sometimes it's followed by an 'alright?', which is practically a C21 howdoyoudo.)

I've long missed the edit window but I can't help but comment to correct my 'Americans'.

As a Canadian in a happy relationship with an American, we quickly realised the difference that you've pointed out. We also realised that I had a tinge of the stereotypical Canadian "sooorry" sound, so we ran with it. If it's a situation where one of us intends to express remorse for a situation occurring, we slightly intonate towards the "o" sound, and for situations where we're accepting blame, we edge towards the American "sarry" (again, over emphasized to get the point across). It's subtle, but it's worked well for us.

That's adorable.

In the UK you say sorry all the time. You usually don't mean it.

This is apparently called the “Sorry reflex”. I’ve recently learned that “sorry!” in London at least, can mean - “fuck off/you”. I would say sorry to someone bumping into me and not realise why but now I understand why.

>> A recent survey of more than 1,000 Brits found that that the average person says ‘sorry’ around eight times per day – and that one in eight people apologise up to 20 times a day.

“The readiness of the English to apologise for something they haven’t done is remarkable, and it is matched by an unwillingness to apologise for what they have done,” wrote Henry Hitchings in his aptly-titled Sorry!: The English and their Manners.

As (yet another) Canadian, I've used the same phonological distinction in my close relationships with Americans to great success. It's been surprising to me how much tension is eased by disambiguating the two senses!

As an American, I've often used "sorry" in the sense you are talking about, and normally it works out fine. Maybe it's a regional thing?

But there is also a difference between using "sorry" as an expression of sympathy when interacting with close relations, and public apologies.

> Maybe it's a regional thing?

I think so. I use "sorry" as a casual non-apology sometimes when I don't mean to trouble people for the same reasons as others up-thread.

It wasn't until I met my exgf when I realized that some people are perplexed by that. I said it in the context of "hope I'm not troubling you," and her immediate response was "why are you apologizing?"

Didn't help that I came back with "...I'm not?" because she insisted I was.

That said, my mother is Australian, so at least half of my upbringing is non-American, and I often don't give much thought to certain cultural discrepancies (even though I was born and raised in the US) because I have a hard enough time keeping my own straight. lol

Hmm. I have lived all my life in the United States. When I have been able to visit other countries, I have been in the habit of learning at least three verbal cues: "Please", "Thank you", and "Sorry".

The first two are often the same word or phrase, in asking for help or offering thanks. The third sound is usually when bumping into someone in a crowd, or in response to getting in someone's way. Or apologizing when it's taking a bit longer for me to understand a particular situation.

I have not traveled in Africa or Southeast Asia, so very likely that I am missing the point here. But I don't intend to take on the power to heal the whole world when I say "Sorry" with sincerity. I'm just trying to avoid becoming more of a problem.

America is something of a bully culture, unfortunately. They tend to win and be glorified.

As opposed to where? I am not familiar with any cultures where the "nice guy" wins out over the aggressive "type A" personality who prioritizes winning over empathy. Even in very polite asian societies. It seems like it's just human instincts.

As a former Southerner, I can confirm. The Southern United States is the most British in its social constructs.

I think it's quite a literal difference actually. Apologizing without further explanation can imply that you don't know what went wrong but that you accept responsibility anyway. You've literally volunteered for the role of scapegoat.

Your latter statement implies an observation of a cause and effect relationship. "It was wrong", especially if followed by "because..." shows that you know _why_ it was a mistake and that you'll be able to rectify it in the future.

It truly is a thing for people to feel anxious and upset and apologize without understanding what they did wrong, and it is an admission of weakness. In a better world, it wouldn't be pounced upon. But in this world, I'd recommend that people keep a cool head and focus on observations of consequences, not acceptance of blame.

This is a very important distinction. "I did X" isn't seen often enough, in individuals and companies. Part of it is a perception that it invites litigation. I hate how it's rare to hear a company (or person) admit they made a mistake, or didn't take the best path.

Not doing this makes even well-intentioned organizations and people feel slimy and dishonest to me. I'm evidently in the minority.

My last employer (t50 retailer, oddly enough) was one of the first I've worked at that had a top to bottom culture encouraging that.

I think the biggest enabler was the response.

If someone said "I made a mistake and did X", the response was invariably "What are we going to do about it now?" or "How can we avoid doing it again?"

I guess part of it was a strong company identity and shared ownership. So it wasn't so much "You admitted a mistake" rather than "You admitted a mistake we all made (through you)".

It was weird, but I don't think I saw people get jumped on for admitting mistakes my entire time there.

I also apologize more than usual. Even at work. But I've also learned that if someone is unfairly trying to blame me I will vigorously defend myself. Maybe even going a fair bit over the top. I feel like people learn pretty quickly that I'm not someone they can just dump stuff on -- I've literally had people say, "remind me not to mess with you".

I'm the nicest most contrite person you'll ever meet -- until I'm not.

I definitely had to learn as I got older to not simply make peace. For people who are not naturally assertive, it takes some time to control your emotional response when confronted in that manner, but it does become easier (and less necessary) over time.

I think the cure for that is often to spend some time away from the keyboard and social interaction and think "What are the standards I hold myself to? What kind of communities do I wish to be part of, and what sort of behavior is required from the members of those communities to maintain the tone that I'd like to see?" Then hold yourself to it, and actively seek out communities where the members interact in the ways that you'd like to be a part of.

When you've made a mistake or someone claims you have made a mistake, step back outside yourself and look at your behavior dispassionately. If you don't meet the standards you've held for yourself, then apologize and make things right. But if after really separating yourself from the situating and thinking about it, you still feel like you acted correctly - stand your ground and don't engage. Or explain why you did what you did and what the consequences would be otherwise.

Or if all else fails, give one of those evasive "I'm sorry you feel the way you do" non-apologies and move on, like corporations do all the time. This is really a form of boundary-setting, and basically means "I find your needs to be not worth my time and energy, so I will extricate myself from this relationship in as inoffensive a way as I can and devote no further energy to engaging with you."

Agree - take a deep breath/sleep on it. Things look different in the morning...

I think this is a good point to keep in mind. Some things sound good but can hurt people's perception of you if used too much, or incorrectly. Apologize too quickly, and without really making sure it was actually a mistake worth apologizing for, and people start to get used to the idea of you being constantly wrong.

I've run into something that is kinda-sorta-similar with regards to praising other people. I really took it to heart a long time ago that I should focus on building other people up and giving credit, always keeping positive, etc. That's not terrible advice, but I've found that if you give everyone else credit too often it shifts people's perception of you. So be nice, give credit where it's due, but don't turn away praise, and accept with good grace credit that is given to you. You want people to remember that you are skilled.

Self-deprecating humor was another thing that went bad places I didn't expect it to go.

When I was in high school, I got in the habit of cracking self deprecating jokes because I was one of the top students. It was a means to try to put other people at ease and signal "I'm just plain folks and not perfect and please don't be intimidated. Please relax."

Later in life it only served to convince people I was a loser and/or had terrible self-esteem issues (or both). And there is no remedy for it once that happens because how are you supposed to explain the joke?

"Noooooo. You have that backwards. I'm so sure I'm better than you that I'm trying to bring myself down to your level and seem approachable!"

0_o

Yeah, no. Just no.

When someone who is top of the class self-deprecates themselves, often people will interpret that as an attack on them, as it looks like you're bringing yourself down to their level, which implies you actually do see yourself on top and them lower than you. I hate being pitied. You're far better off just being who you are, and damn proud of it.

I imagine there's a special extra level of problems that apply when the apology reinforces someone's stereotypical views of the apologizer based on the group they appear to be part of, whether those views are held consciously or unconsciously, which makes especially problematic. Most of those attributes or not readily obvious in an online forum, but some are based on pronoun and/or name (mainly gender and nationality, at least historically, and we're talking about assumptions here, so they don't even have to be accurate).

It was a homeschooling/parenting list. Those tend to skew female and this one did.

Though the reality is that I have never been on an email list that was mostly female membership that wasn't poisoned by sexism. There is inevitably one or two men who have figured out how to participate in the discussion without the entire group wanting their head on a pike and you can't disagree with these men because a zillion women will jump down your throat and it ends up being seriously ugly (yes, I tend to be the woman daring to disagree with such men and having other women act horribly to me).

A more likely explanation is that when I was younger, before my health went to hell, I was fairly charming and likable. So I tended to be the center of attention and I think some people were jealous.

It was also a situation where (oftentimes) I would read the initial email and give my advice on their problem without first reading any of the replies and then my advice would change the direction of discussion because it was so much better than what had already been said. I tended to stand out and there were some people just hell bent on trying to prove that I "didn't know everything" and "wasn't above making mistakes" and "wasn't always right" and this kind of garbage.

Because I tended to stand out, the discussion on the list would end up revolving around everyone lining up to either be "for" or "against" me/my position and then I would hand everyone their head as the least worst answer because patting people on the head for agreeing with me was only going to deepen such problems.

I've spent a lot of years trying to figure out how to let my comments stand on their own and do what I can to refuse to let it become about me. There is no 100 percent cure for that tendency (of people to make things about the person who said them), but I've learned some best practices.

(Comment has been edited.)

I noticed in this comment that you spent a lot of time talking about yourself and specifically praising yourself and your contributions to this community. Having no other insight other than what you are providing me, it seems like you tend to make yourself the center of discussion and honestly, you come across as high-ego. People like that are often polarizing in communities and tend the shift the conversation from "what" to "who". Perhaps the best practice would be to learn to make your point without personalizing it so much.

Perhaps the best practice would be to learn to make your point without personalizing it so much.

Yes, generally speaking, that's a best practice and one I follow as best I can. Unfortunately, it can't always be followed without hamstringing one's ability to say something meaningful and address more important issues than the tendency of the world to geegaw at me for existing.

I wasn't asking for advice. Giving advice in a situation like this one tends to boil down to blaming the victim rather than trying to understand what they are saying about a larger social issue and patterns of behavior involving many people, not just themselves.

People who are what santoshalper described as "high ego" are usually charismatic, and that makes a difference with everything.

The probably not obvious at this point context is the comment I replied to was an early reply (the first one?) and is probably assuming "The issue is you are a woman and it must have been a male dominant environment -- just like here on HN where DoreenMichele is a woman in a predominantly male environment." In spite of me promptly replying to say "no, that wasn't the issue," there has been at least one other comment assuming it's about my gender -- which is why I added a link to that comment to my initial reply (in hopes of preventing ten other replies assuming it was about my gender).

Sometimes, there are no good answers.

I'm going to go try to do other things now. If other people here want to continue to make it about me that my comment in this discussion happens to have been upvoted by other people, I'm not taking responsibility for that. It was my third comment for the day on HN and the other two have been utterly and completely ignored so far.

I have no control over other people's upvotes and a really poor ability to predict which of my comments will do well on HN. I spend about half my time going "That was brilliant. Why doesn't anyone appreciate me?" and the other half going "God, why is this being upvoted so much???" and maybe one percent of my time going "Yes, this makes total sense to me how this comment is being received." (Comment not intended to be mathematically accurate nor to cover all scenarios of how I feel about HN reactions to my comments.)

0_o

Toodle doo, y'all.

Kudos!

That's because upvotes aren't a true proxy of how valuable a comment is, it's also a proxy for other things like "does this comment provoke thought or further conversation?"

Nevermind that group nonsense. The same phenomena occur on an individual level. People see you as fitting into some position in a social hierarchy or behavior or ability or whatever and confirm their belief whenever you do something that confirms it, while finding excuses when you do something different. "That thing he did turned out surprisingly well. But he's dumb so it must have been a fluke."

If you're only looking at racism or sexism or whatever, you're ignoring the bigger and more insidious social problems that are individual and pervade small groups and families everywhere.

When I first heard about micro-aggressions, I thought, wow, so that's what's been happing. That explains all those subtle insults, unexpected rudeness, quiet exclusions, etc. But I'm not in one of those special "marginalized" groups and being actually marginalized doesn't matter to identitarians because their politics is more important than people's welfare.

> If you're only looking at racism or sexism or whatever, you're ignoring the bigger and more insidious social problems that are individual and pervade small groups and families everywhere.

Oh, I'm not, that's what I meant by an extra level of problems, not that it explains everything, but it may exacerbate it by giving more things for people to key off of that aren't based on rational measures.

What I meant is along the lines of "yes, dealing with groups is annoying because there's all sorts of weird group dynamics and people making assumptions and not re-evaluations based on new evidence, and then it gets worse for those people that have identifying characteristics that allow people to make even more baseless assumptions.

Yes, but that's something overhyped in social media and probably hardly even exists. It's very easy to incorrectly attribute mistreatment to something visible like sex or race. I used to have a workmate who complained everybody hated him at his previous job because he was the only American there. But then most people ended up hating him at his new job too, which was majority American staffed. People might use the obvious feature (eg. male, American, etc.) as an insult but it's often not the actual reason for the mistreatment. Bullies just pick on whatever unique characteristics their victim has as a way to belittle them and that can get misunderstood as sexism/etc.

> Yes, but that's something overhyped in social media and probably hardly even exists.

As someone who has noticed their own knee-jerk reactions based on sex at times (due to a number of factors that mostly boil down to very little exposure to women in my specific field over the decades I've been in it based on small company sizes outside of major markets), I think you're either just entirely unaware of it, lucky enough to not be around it much, or oblivious to it.

To be absolutely clear, I have a bias on on initial interpretation of capability of women before there it information otherwise. This rears its head when I read something about a women in tech having a technical problem and assume it's because of their skill level before knowing anything about them, and it's done in a way that is beyond what I would assume about a man. It's ingrained, but I have noticed it, and try to specifically correct for it now. I would like to think it's made little or no difference in my interactions with women in tech because a) they have been extremely infrequent, and b) I try to not let my assessment of someone's skill affect how I treat them. That's probably optimistic of me though. I don't exactly feel shame about this, it's a natural part of being human. We have biases, we can either try to find them and acknowledge and/or try to work on them, or just live with them.

So what you have here is a very specific counter-example, of someone on the other side saying concretely it has happened at least for once. I doubt I'm unique in this. Most people have biases about all sorts of groups, that come out in large and small ways. Maybe you don't, or your biases are so small it's hard to note them. Forgive me if I think that's unlikely, and you have many biases for many different types of people, as everyone does, and as I do for in many other ways I'm not aware of, I'm sure.

I imagine the other side of this probably feels like people judging you for being underdressed ata group function at all times, no matter how much effort you put into it. People are going to make assumptions if you're the only person in jeans and a t-shirt at a group function of people in suits, and you'll have to prove yourself all the time to overcome people's initial assumptions. My guess is that for women in tech, life is like a bunch of that happening over and over again, unless they get a reputation that proceeds them. That doesn't seem overhyped to me at all, it seems pretty likely to me and a shitty thing to go through life dealing with.

I generally agree with all you've said there. I guess I have so much personal experience with non-sexism prejudice in all kinds of ways that I don't really care about the plight of women as much. It seems like everyone gets it. If someone asks as question on StackOverflow, I judge them for having a default avatar or username. I judge them for having a teenage writing style. If someone writes in 3rd person or 1st person, you can judge them in either direction depending on whether other signals are consistent with it. I try to combat that in myself and treat everyone fairly, but ways to judge people are just overwhelming even without knowing their sex. You get judged by the way you walk, the way to look at people, the timing of your speaking, your age, your clothes, everything. You might say those features aren't innate and people can change them, but it can be incredibly hard for some because they're actually signals of some underlying qualities and if you don't have those qualities, you're struggling to fake the signals which is risky and difficult.

I think women may actually get a better deal overall because so many men are trying not to be sexist that they treat them well, giving them a free pass on all those other judgable signals. Men might not even understand that a woman is revealing her inadequacy by wearing the "wrong" clothes, while they'll openly laugh at a man exhibiting "wrong" behavior.

Apologies are complex things. If you dole them out like candy they lose their power, and since an apology's power comes from your dignity, it follows that you lose your dignity.

So when do you apologize? An apology is great when you've hurt someone by making a mistake - which I would define as something you wouldn't do knowing how it would turn out. You've made a deliberate decision that in hindsight was an error of judgement. Hopefully that doesn't happen often.

What does happen often is a decision you make that hurt someone's feelings - maybe you declined to merge a pull request because the patch wasn't good, or you skipped a colleague's wedding because you were sick; in those cases you can maybe make it up to them or explain, but don't apologize - beyond the "I'm sorry I couldn't come, but I had a fever" one-liner, which is more sympathy than an apology.

I think the solution here is to choose values that are not conditional on what people think of you or what you’ve done.

Then, when you apologize, you’re never doing it to seek forgiveness. Apologies are simply an expression of regret that your actions didn’t align with your values.

How other people react doesn’t matter.

E.g. I’m sorry for A. I regret A bc I value B. B is important to me bc C. To better achieve B, I will be avoiding A in the future and striving for D and E instead.

I once apologized to someone and they took full advantage of the situation stomping me into the proverbial ground and ending in a psychological position where they were the clear winner and had an advantage over me in future encounters. Most people don’t do this and are gracious. But unless you’ve had this happen to you, you don’t have an understanding of the risks associated with a full blown mea culpa.

if a person uses your honesty against you then finding this out early is a very good thing. you made a mistake, who cares? question is what did you learn? share that. and i still love you none the less stranger.

In a group setting, it's often not that simple. They may have just successfully aligned everyone against you such that bullying you is now not only acceptable behavior but expected behavior.

When someone of that ilk works as a moderator in an online community (or is otherwise influential in a group), it tends to wind up being a really awful cesspit while many of the members will feel they have "bragging rights" for belonging if they happen to be fortunate enough to be one of the "insiders" expected to do the bullying and not get bullied.

Nah. Dont change. Next time it happens just turn it on its head. Make it public that you were just doing it to be pleasant but now you are out for blood. Dont back down, this person is already your enemy at this point. Fuck those people.

Its working for me so far. Dis agreeable people are my daily antagonistic target. Its a great sport.

What an... odd situation. I'm sorry that happened.

I'm not sure I've ever quite seen that dynamic, so I'm actually really curious for details. What kinds of things did you find yourself apologizing for? And then, what were people picking on you for? And what was the relation exactly?

If you're a moderator of a group who has to make hard decisions, depending on the group, it can be a thankless job since you'll always piss off half the people no matter what.

I suppose the original post doesn't talk about what does require apology vs. what doesn't. E.g. making a necessary and correct decision that still pisses people off is usually better done with empathy for those who it bothers, but not apology.

I'm with you on this one. I've noticed this 'singling out' behaviour on WhatsApp groups for example. I was recently on a WhatsApp group where (I wouldn't even call it a mistake) a slight error of judgement led to the issue being way over-inflated and me being made an example of for the 'benefit' of others. There's just way too much of that on the internet these days. I've seen many genuine & sincere apologies from people with large followings (since some people are suggesting these rules don't apply to average Joe) and even then people don't let it go. The world just wants someone to blame, that is the underlying problem.

> I did a lot of sincere public apologizing

If you generally live by your own values, and act according to them, then (in my opinion) you should rarely need to apologise for that.

Why did you need to do a lot of apologizing, I'm curious?

If I think of particular people I personally know who frequently apologise, it often seems to me that they are doing that to centre and prioritise their own experience ahead of other people's - which perhaps was exactly the problem in the first place. That type of apology can taste slightly sour.

I find that listening is a more important aspect of apologising than talking.

> If you generally live by your own values, and act according to them

Maybe you're different than the rest of us, but I imagine that most people do things from time to time that don't align with their values, either because of an honest accident, or because of a "moment of weakness". Obviously we don't need to publicly apologize for everything though.

I am in no way discounting your description. The behaviors you described are incredibly immature and possibly misogynistic. I am not clear on the social context in which those communications occurred but not anything I would want to be involved with. That level of immaturity and poor empathy has nothing to do with any mistake or apology.

Agree that also in my experience, apologies lead to being perceived as weak. You will also notice that most leaders (think top management) never apologize, let even directly recognize any kind of personal mistake - I don't think it's just for a lack of honesty (although there's some of that too) just rather a technique to never look weak in any circumstance.

Sorry to hear this story. Sounds like you’re over it, but maybe your younger self would have benefited from hearing this: https://twitter.com/JIMrichards1010/status/12391407105589698...

Wow can't believe that's from the start of Coronavirus outbreak, very prescient. What does this have to do with the topic though

I really don't get people who try to hold people to things they said years ago. People change, and opinions change.

And the only people you need to apologize to are the people who you actually hurt, not random people on the internet.

Do you keep a blog? Find your comments interesting.

I run a bunch of different websites. You are probably being downvoted because my profile contains links to a variety of things by me, including my Patreon (which needs to be updated -- note to self: Put that on a To Do list somewhere for, say, next week-ish/before the end of November).

The trap of the ego. Sounds like you were stuck in a boys-club when they needed reminding it was a woman who started programming.

I’ve been fortunate to work at a few places where we had a really good diverse mix of people. It was there that we had the best ideas, the best teams, the best support, and the best place to work from an HR perspective.

I’m sad to read this because this experience isn’t alone. So many I’ve talked to have similar stories. I’m glad you didn’t take their crap and you continue to do what you do.

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