It's surely not your contention that said apologies sound hollow because there is nothing really to apologise for and therefore it is inherently untrue?
There are some challenges with media-based apologies because they can only be done at all through media PR systems, of course, and there's an impact therefore on the shape and style of an apology that Marshall McLuhan might have written about if he were still here.
So there's an element of apology fatigue that will prompt some of those replies.
But even then, apologies that sound hollow or sound written by PR generally are somewhat hollow or written with help from, or experience of, PR. Usually the PR of a law firm, right?
It is wholly possible to apologise in ways that do not have those qualities, and wholly possible for people to recognise them.
>It's surely not your contention that said apologies sound hollow because there is nothing really to apologise for and therefore it is inherently untrue?
I can not understand at all how you got that from my message.
As for the rest of what you're saying. Yes, there's a way to apologize in a way that don't have those qualities, and it's apologizing directly to the people you've wronged, if you have. Apologizing to a faceless group is pointless.
> Apologizing to a faceless group is pointless.
Well... it might be at least pragmatic. Apologising to the wider community for wronging a member of the community is normal; it's also expected.
And I guess apologising to one's audience for not being who they think you are is essentially, the same thing, just with a parasocial twist.
Parasocial "communities" exist (fandoms) and they do rather complicate things.
Apologizing to the mob is more likely to backfire: It's seen as an admission of guilt and that they're right to "cancel" the person.
Yeah, you should apologize before the mob forms. This is much more important for large corporations, if they do a big screwup and apologizes after massive backlash, that is bad, but if they apologize before the massive backlash its much better.
That's why it was a question.
> It is wholly possible to apologise in ways that do not have those qualities, and wholly possible for people to recognise them.
I have watched many of these apologies to a crowd, the problem is they never satiate the crowd, only further cementing the idea that something worse happened.
I ask that anyone in this situation to never apologise it will never help your situation.