My dad told me a story once that I think resonates here. When he was a young man, he stole a bunch of tools from his former employer. He knew it was wrong. Eventually, it began to bother him and he knew that there was no way he could live with what he had done unless he tried to make it right as best he could.

He took all the tools back to his old boss, fully expecting to go to jail, and told him that he was sorry for stealing from him. To my dad’s amazement, his old boss just kind of stared at him in disbelief, accepted his apology, and sent him on his way.

A sincere apology is the first step in taking responsibility for your actions. It takes a dose of humility to go to someone you’ve wronged and tell them, sincerely, that you acknowledge that what you did was wrong and you are sorry for your actions.

The second step is being ready and willing to accept the consequences for your actions. Whatever those may be. The third is to do the right thing next time.

A personal philosophy that I try to live by and one that I try to teach my kids is, “Don’t do anything you’re going to have to lie about. And if you do, don’t lie about it. And if you do, come clean and make it right as soon as possible.” If you’re really a good person with integrity, living with your own lies or misdeeds eventually gets to be a heavy load. Apologies don’t make everything ok and they don’t undo your actions. But, they are an important first step in accepting responsibility for your actions and acknowledging the harm that you’ve caused.

If the apologee knows that the apologizer wasn’t sincere, then it’s pretty much worthless. However, the insincerity of the apologizer isn’t always known by the apologee, and that’s when the apology still does have the intended psychological effect on the apologee. However, an insincere apologizer doesn’t get any of the benefits giving an apology usually comes with. However, the apologizer can still view that as an effective a social manipulation method, if they’re a psychopath.

I’d say if the person is legitimately working to improve themselves and aspiring to not be the sort of person who would do such things, then there can be a point to an apology.

I do hate “I didn’t mean to _____” in situations where they clearly 100% did mean to. For instance, saying “I didn’t mean to hurt you” after saying hurtful things rings extremely hollow. Like, if they said hurtful things to you in the heat of the moment, then in that specific moment, they 100% did mean to hurt you. Even if it was less than a second before they regretted it, they wouldn’t have said it unless they didn’t mean it the way it came out, they didn’t realize it was (that much of?) a trigger for you, they had some disorder that made them say it, etc. In which case “I didn’t mean to hurt you” is a reasonable way to start an attempt at reconciliation. But if they’re pissed and say something hurtful, it’s because they want you to experience pain/punishment. “I was an asshole and I said things that I wish I hadn’t; I’m sorry.” is a better way to go in that situation. (Really, I think using the actual word “sorry” in an apology can make it come across more sincerely, so long as the rest of the apology is sincere and not some bullshit non-apology.)

Maybe it’s just a quirk of the English language that people use “I didn’t mean to…” and “I’m sorry for…” interchangeably in such cases even though the most literal interpretations of the two constructions are quite different.

Also it’s not as if there’s only way to dodge actually apologising. “I’m sorry you felt hurt” or whatever is pretty bullshit, I think.

But yeah. I think in general considering whether the literal words of your apology are strictly true when apologising is a good way to make your apology not come across as empty platitudes.

And I can definitely think of at least one time when I’ve been “apologised to” but really they were just sluffing off responsibility for anything. Usually when people do that to me I smile and accept their apology, but privately I’m thinking something like “yeah, this is the closest thing to an apology I can really expect from this self-deluded douchebag” and I’ll remember that shit for the future.

I think what’s worse is FORCED appologies. You already know if it’s forced, it’s just pointless words. They don’t mean it.

I’d respect it more if they doubled down, and gave the double middle finger. Like going on Lemmy and telling people that without drastic culture changing shifts in the overall presentation of the OS, linux will NEVER be a recognizable OS to the general public. 4% userbase is a pathetic number that represents an all time high, and is just as easily considered a rounding error for the REAL operating systems!

doubles down with a double middle finger

Oh! Oh! You want me to appologize!

moons the crowd

BASK IN MY GREATNESS!!!