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Comment by Kwpolska | Hacker News Reader

> In that light it would be hard to understand the negative reaction to my participation. After all, it's an experiment and isn't finding interesting new uses for the card fair-game? Even after Starbucks shut down the card, isn't the experiment living on? Why the outrage?

Because the card would likely still be alive if you wouldn't act like a dick?

> For those who are hurt, angry, or frustrated with the role I played, I sincerely apologize. Had I known so many were so invested in this, I would have certainly done things differently.

A hint for you: create Asshole's Card with the $625 you stole and continue the experiment. You shall add even more funds and give some back to Jonathan himself.

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There is no way you can seriously believe this would still be going on had it not been for Sam. There would have been someone else siphoning off funds. This thing obviously didn't scale well. The naïveté is astounding.

While I disagree with his actions: His post was moderate, he apologized and promised a longer reply and explanation in the future.

Please stop the name calling.

He did not apologize for his actions.

He apologized that silly emotional people got upset at the obvious outcome of this entire stunt.

A sincere apology takes three words. When those three words are buried in hundreds of words of qualifications and context its no longer an apology.

The entire thing is redolent of a condescending tone. Sam, you see, is a scientist! Anyone who questioned his behavior is just an having an emotional reaction and does not understand the real world - where there is always a Sam to piss in the well.

The thing is, most of use knew this already, and his demonstration did not teach anyone anything other than about Sam's character.

EDIT: Oh, I don't care about the gift card. I am simply commenting on the 'apology.'

Fair enough. I guess you can read that from the article.

For me, I can't see these things. Someone else already said that he should've apologized first, unqualified - and I agree that this would make a difference.

On the other hand, I'm not sure if I'd have started like that - it feels natural to me to explain first, reason about my actions and end with an apology. We're not talking about a company here (see the AirBnB comparison), we're talking about a random guy as far as I'm concerned.

Lastly: I guess a lot is getting lost in translation for me. Lots of advices on this forum are hard to get for me, because they are about nuances of English words, implied meanings, 'tone' and cultural rules. While it might very well be possible that you/most of the posters and Sam are sharing the same standards and therefor 'better' understand the content or see a subtext: I cannot.

> it feels natural to me to explain first, reason about my actions and end with an apology

Apologies that start with an explanation are very often more of a personal justification (coping mechanism) than a real apology. It frames the conversation in a way so as to reduce the cognitive dissonance between your actions and the social norm you violated (reason for apology), as well as reducing the discomfort in the act of apology.

It also makes people think you are apologizing to appease, instead of expressing genuine regret.

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