Most public apologies are a variation on "I'm sorry you were offended".
I love defensive people. /s
It's the same basic statement, except it places you as the active party, rather than putting the onus on the person you're apologizing to.
Edit: it occurs to me that this hooks straight back in to the article's question. Why are most public apologies so bad? Because most of them are made by people who aren't actually sorry.
I sometimes find myself tempted to use a non-apology like "I'm sorry if I offended you" in order to short-circuit the irrational anger in the other person quickly, so that we can get to the point of actually figuring out what I've said that triggered the problem and how their reaction was wrong, and what's the deeper issue underneath.
I personally don't understand why you'd feel bad about how another person feels as a result of something you've said, but not feel that you should apologize. To me, the two go hand in hand. It's not about "should," it's not about right and wrong, it's simply about expressing the sentiment that you regret what happened as a result of your actions.
Even if you said something totally innocent like "I like apples" and somebody got offended at that because they're crazy, you can still sincerely apologize for that if you actually care that they feel bad.
And of course you don't have to care that they feel bad. In many cases not caring would be a perfectly reasonable response. In which case, don't lie by saying sorry.
Thank you. The whole subthread confused me mostly about how the word "sorry" in English works.
> it's not about right and wrong, it's simply about expressing the sentiment that you regret what happened as a result of your actions.
Yes, exactly this.
I see a few key points in what you said that I want to respond to in particular.
> I am sorry for how they feel. I am not sorry for what I said.
You don't have to be sorry for what you said to be sorry for offending or hurting the person. You can stand by what you said entirely while still being sorry that what you said hurt them. Saying "I'm sorry I said something that offended you" doesn't mean you're retracting your words but it does mean that you are saddened for having caused the other party pain, even if you don't think their pain is rational.
> but that doesn't change the fact that your outrage is [...] totally your fault
If you're concerned about "fault" in this case, I'm not really convinced you do feel bad. "I'm sorry I said something that offended you" isn't "I'm a terrible person who is totally in the wrong"; it's "I regret that I did something that resulted in you being hurt." If you stand entirely by what you said it might even mean something like "I wish it were possible to go back and time and restate that in a way that would achieve what I intended without hurting you."
> "I'm sorry" means I feel bad about something and I don't want to do it again
Ultimately, I think this is what it's all about. "I'm sorry you were offended" is (at its absolute best) "I feel bad about you being offended"; "I'm sorry I offended you" is "I feel bad about you being offended and I don't want to do it again."
I usually go out of my way to play cooperative with people. It often means that I try to say, "I wish it were possible to go back and time and restate that in a way that would achieve what I intended without hurting you".
Someone's surprising outrage at something I think is innocent also reveals my lack of understanding of that other person. Assuming their honesty, I want to go into this in order to better understand what's going on. Maybe we both actually think the same way about the issue, maybe it's just an unfortunate phrasing on my part that caused the problem? It happened this way many times.
So to circle back to the beginning of the whole thread - I don't think that "I'm sorry (if) I offended you" is always a non-apology. Just because someone is offended doesn't mean they're right. I learned the last one the hard way after being a victim of emotional abuse for over a year, when the other party got outraged or sad at random things to make me do whatever their wanted (and honestly, I'm not angry at them anymore - I grew to understand it was complicated and messy situation for both of us, as relationships sometimes turn out to be; the point is, it revealed a flaw in trying to atone for offending someone at all costs).
I actually spent a couple years in a similar-sounding situation (and have similarly moved past the anger) so I unfortunately have a pretty good idea where you're coming from here. It's also a pretty different situation from what I think the discussion has mostly been centered around. I'm not sure how you handled the experience or what the general case is but I remember for me, for a while I was genuinely sorry for hurting them every time and then it eventually switched over to me just wanting to say whatever it took to stop the episode. It's actually a fair bit more complicated than that but basically the point of the apology wasn't really about remorse or making amends; for the other person it was about control and for me it was just a survival technique. I think it's a fair bit different from the general case, especially when public apologies are involved.
> Just because someone is offended doesn't mean they're right.
I don't think "right" is the way to put it at all. Even if we can say someone is or isn't right to be offended, I don't think it really matters. If you truly feel bad about somebody being offended, does whether or not you think they're "right" to be so really affect whether you feel bad about being a partial cause for that state? Or is it more that whether or not you deem them "right" really affects whether you feel bad about them being offended in the first place? That's not rhetorical; I'm genuinely curious but my expectation is that it's the latter. And note that for this I'm trying to differentiate between "feel bad about how they feel" and the sort of "feel bad about having to deal with this situation of them acting offended" I alluded to above.
I'm usually pretty good at empathy and understanding others' viewpoints but maybe some people are different enough from me in a way I'm having difficulty comprehending because I cannot imagine a situation where an action I take causes somebody to feel bad and where I genuinely feel bad about their feelings but I don't regret my role in causing that state. And I'm all too familiar with cases where somebody might have to apologise when they don't mean it but very, very few where they wouldn't benefit from trying to act sincere about it.
For me the relationship ended basically the day after I refused to apologize again, because at this point the pattern went to ridiculous extreme; apologizing then would require me to explicitly lie to myself about what I believe is true, and I do value truth very much.
> If you truly feel bad about somebody being offended, does whether or not you think they're "right" to be so really affect whether you feel bad about being a partial cause for that state? Or is it more that whether or not you deem them "right" really affects whether you feel bad about them being offended in the first place?
I say (or do) something. The other party gets offended. I will feel bad regardless of who is "right". The situation sucks, yes, but I care about feelings and internal emotional state of others much more. Can't help it, empathy turns itself on automatically. I feel compelled to resolve the issue as soon as possible not just because there's someone angry in front of me, but because I genuinely feel bad about causing them to feel bad. That's my weak spot that was used to take advantage of me once.
I worked hard for that experience to not destroy my empathy. Instead, I settled on following defense mechanism: if I start to feel that someone is playing me this way on purpose, I pause the situation and calmly but explicitly note that I feel I'm being emotionally manipulated and do not wish for it to continue. So far it only happened once, and the person involved backed down immediately, and the problem did not occur again with them.
Public apology situations are usually different than private ones, but the manipulative element can be still present. Looking at Twitter outrages in particular, it's more often present than not - probably due to the fact that the most outraged people are the ones who have absolutely nothing to do with the issue. Here, outrage is far too often used as a tool to control the words and actions of the accused party.
> I'm not going to apologize for something I'm really not
> sorry about.