[ghaff]

I'm not sure this is always a bad thing. No, I don't go out of my way to cause offense. However, I've certainly said or written things that caused individuals and even groups of individuals to be pissed off in ways that I consider irrational. (And in ways many others would consider to be irrational as well.) Under those circumstances, if pressed, I might use that sort of formulation. Except under extreme duress, I'm not going to apologize for something I'm really not sorry about.

[mikeash]

How about "I'm sorry I offended you"?

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.

[TeMPOraL]

But how to say in a polite and effective way, "you're behaving irrationally, the offence is something you created for yourself; I feel bad that you're feeling bad now, but I did nothing I should be apologizing for"?

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.

[mikeash]

"I'm sorry I offended you" is a perfectly reasonable way to express "I feel bad that you're feeling bad now."

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.

[TeMPOraL]

> "I'm sorry I offended you" is a perfectly reasonable way to express "I feel bad that you're feeling bad now."

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.

[mikeash]

Well, I think a lot of English speakers are confused as well. There seems to be this idea that "I'm sorry" implicitly means, "I fucked up, it's all my fault, I'm a worm, I deserve to die," and so forth. But it's really just, "I wish it wasn't so, and I'd do it differently if I could go back and try again," or something along those lines.

[ghaff]

Except, under those circumstances, I'm probably not losing any sleep over the fact that I offended you. So that statement means I'm shouldering the blame at some level but it's also typically dishonest. I'm not actually sorry I offended you because I think you're being an oversensitive idiot.

[mikeash]

Then don't apologize. If you're not actually sorry, don't say you are.

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.

[ghaff]

Which is a reasonable approach--although it may or may not be the best one from a PR perspective.

[masterzora]

It doesn't sound like you're actually sorry that they were offended in these circumstances, either, so "I'm sorry if you were offended" is still apologising for something you're not really sorry about, and poorly at that. Leaving aside the question of whether you should be sorry since that's too situational to discuss in generalities, if you're going to pretend you might as well pretend well, I'd say.

[TeMPOraL]

I don't know how people interpret the word "sorry" here, but for me "I'm sorry" means I feel bad about something and I don't want to do it again. Therefore I can honestly say "I'm sorry you're offended", or "I'm sorry if I offended you", by which I mean "if you were offended by what I said then I feel bad about you experiencing negative emotions; I don't want to say things that make you feel bad; but that doesn't change the fact that your outrage is ridiculous and completely irrational and totally your fault, so calm the fuck down for five seconds and let us resolve it". I am sorry for how they feel. I am not sorry for what I said.

[masterzora]

There's a lot going on here and it's hard to properly talk about it all at once so I'm going to try to discuss some pieces and hope I don't lose an aggregate meaning in the process.

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."

[TeMPOraL]

I think you haven't lost the aggregate meaning, and in fact you've managed to capture my own view on this issue perfectly. Thank you for this point-by-point elaboration.

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).

[masterzora]

> 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

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.

[TeMPOraL]

> '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.

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.

[kibwen]

  > I'm not going to apologize for something I'm really not 
  > sorry about.

In this circumstance, it may be better not to apologize at all. "I'm not sorry" is at least sincere, relative to the typical nose-thumbing pseudo-apologies.