Comment by renewiltord | Hacker News Reader

Comment by renewiltord | Hacker News Reader

Apologizing to the hordes is just letting blood in the water. It inflames their hunger. There's no point. Just press forward and apply force in the market. They will obey. Each of them is just trying to use you as a springboard. No need to exaggerate their importance.

The "oh my god oh my god I'm being harmed help you're hurting me" crap is a game they're playing to parlay into their own career of outrage. A few hits and they're made. "How dare you!" and so on.

Apologizing won't make them back off and it won't bring any friends. In So You've Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson, none of the publicly shamed people who apologized found peace. It's because there's none there. The one who was unaffected just acted blissfully unaffected and he was.

People are ultimately unhappy for a different reason. If you check their history they'll post about loneliness, SSRIs, therapists, and how the world is shit. 80% of Americans are happy. You're going to listen to the few who couldn't find their way there?

No. Never apologize.

> What led Zuckerberg to lose faith in the value of contrition? Here’s a guess: ultimately, it bought him very little, at least in the court of public opinion

Well, I disagree about never apologizing.

The mob can only do this if your apologies mean nothing. A good rule of thumb if someone's apologies mean nothing is, if they apologize every time, they don't mean it. Your apologies only mean something if you apologize when you know you were wrong.

So this tactic doesn't work if you only apologize when you mean it. If someone says "you stepped on my shoes" and you apologize, and then they say "you're a racist for stepping on my shoes" and you tell them to go fuck themselves, you'll never wind up in this situation, because you only apologize from the heart and not as a way to avoid problems or as a default stance when getting accosted.

Apologize. Only when you know you're wrong. Don't always apologize. Sometimes, you weren't wrong, and when someone insists that you say you were anyway, tell them to go fuck themselves.

Nah, Justine Sacco clearly meant it. She was not trying to hurt people. It didn't stop anyone. It doesn't matter what you mean. It's a bunch of sad, mean people seeking to hurt others. Better to not apologize. If you were wrong, do better next time.

I'd apologize to my wife, my friends, my colleagues. To randos on the Internet? Let them rage.

Or apologize anyway, because you did something wrong, and go through all that anyway??

This rant reads like absolutely psycho shit just for the record.

I'm just disappointed that internet denizens don't say "physco" anymore.

How so?

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