Comparing public apologies after being canceled... one worked, one backfired hard

So about 6 months ago I had two friends get caught in cancel culture storms pretty close together. One wrote this long, lawyer-ish apology with all these 'if anyone was offended' qualifiers and tried to explain their side. The other just said 'I messed up, I'm sorry, here's what I'm doing different' and then went quiet for a month. First one got roasted even worse, second one actually got people to chill a bit. Has anyone else noticed that the shorter and less defensive the apology, the better it goes?

2 comments

2 Comments

jennysullivan1mo ago

Exactly. That quiet month was KEY. People need to see that someone is sitting with the weight of what they did, not just trying to talk their way out of it with a bunch of fancy words. The first apology you described reads like someone trying to get OUT of trouble, while the second reads like someone trying to LEARN from trouble. It's the difference between "I'm sorry you feel that way" and "I'm sorry I did that." And when you add the lawyer-talk on top of it, it just screams that you care more about your reputation than the people you hurt.

samwalker1mo ago

Oh man, I used to think people just needed to explain themselves more to be understood, but watching how both those apologies played out totally flipped my perspective. The second one comes off way more genuine because they're not trying to control how people feel about it, they're just owning their mistake and showing they get it. That quiet month probably did more for them than any point-by-point defense ever could.