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My Public Apology

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Re: My Public Apology

#11

Post by drusenko »

palish wrote: post #6

It seems like this public apology will actually do you more harm than good. The best strategy is probably to say nothing (i.e. delete this) and wait for it to blow over. In a week, nobody will care. The problem is that apologizing like this will draw more attention to the initial act. People are more likely to think "man, that really was horrible" than "well, that was horrible, but he apologized, so it's okay". Basic…

That reasoning is true until it isn't. If you sweep things under the rug, the public eye generally moves on to the next thing quickly, and nobody cares or realizes it happened a week later. If you apologize prematurely, then you draw attention to it, and people remember. But if you don't apologize, and it actually is a big deal, then people do remember and you look like a horrible person.

It's the same debate that centers around when you should write a blog post about downtime. After 10 minutes? Probably not because you've draw attention to the downtime, that wasn't really that severe. 1 hour? Maybe not, people will probably forget about it, and the Internet will have no record that it ever happened. But never post about downtime and users feel ignored, and people get really, really mad at you...

Re: My Public Apology

#13

Post by dangrover »

Humor is often a healthy (if misunderstood) response to something bad happening.

While I'm not defending the remark at all, there's always going to be a crowd that reacts to any joke made in such a context with an automatic irrational "You think $unfortunate_incident is FUNNY!?!"

Re: My Public Apology

#15

Post by palish »

drusenko wrote: post #11
palish wrote: post #6

It seems like this public apology will actually do you more harm than good. The best strategy is probably to say nothing (i.e. delete this) and wait for it to blow over. In a week, nobody will care. The problem is that apologizing like this will draw more attention to the initial act. People are more likely to think "man, that really was horrible" than "well, that was horrible, but he apologized, so it's okay". Basic…

That reasoning is true until it isn't. If you sweep things under the rug, the public eye generally moves on to the next thing quickly, and nobody cares or realizes it happened a week later. If you apologize prematurely, then you draw attention to it, and people remember. But if you don't apologize, and it actually is a big deal, then people do remember and you look like a horrible person. It's the same debate that ce…

I agree to an extent. The problem is that it's not possible to determine whether the "correct" course of action is to publicly apologize or to downplay the initial act. But to make that decision, we can look at how each strategy has worked out for other companies. Remember that hosting company that had major downtime, then made a followup blog post that made jokes ("whoops! we have butterfinters!") etc? The internet came down pretty hard on them. On the flipside, we have Apple, who almost never makes public statements like that, and it works out for them because it allows them to avoid the backlash from a mistake, and it buys them time to objectively decide what to do about it.

Re: My Public Apology

#16

Post by rantfoil »

Ezra wrote: post #10

I think that it also exposes some of the crazy group think going on here, so maybe it wasn't all bad. I mean, You're an idiot isn't supposed to be a +5 comment on this site. And reasoned discourse like It doesn't really matter what the Justin.tv CEO said. He pasted some boiler plate because there's nothing more to be said; the deed had been done. What do you want? An apology for not finding the video? For not policin…

The rabid responses to Tom's post both shocked and surprised me as well. They just seemed a little bit more spirited than I would expect. It was a little schadenfreude-infused, to say the least.

Re: My Public Apology

#17

Post by palish »

Herring wrote: post #14

Coward. Your next submission should have been Maddox's "How to kill yourself like a man." http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=manly_suicid...

Haha, awesome. I hope you're not downmodded into oblivion for this, because that's hilarious.

Re: My Public Apology

#18

Post by einarvollset »

There are things in life that matter more than others.

Startups, money, reputation; all that shit is worthless once you need to deal with the pain of someone dying.

Someone taking their own life is one of those things that should cause you to stop and think of his family, friends and wonder what pushed him to this.

I dunno man, maybe you haven't experienced it, but once you do (and everyone does), I hope you forgive yourself for the stupid shit you said today.

Re: My Public Apology

#19

Post by einarvollset »

einarvollset wrote: post #18

There are things in life that matter more than others. Startups, money, reputation; all that shit is worthless once you need to deal with the pain of someone dying. Someone taking their own life is one of those things that should cause you to stop and think of his family, friends and wonder what pushed him to this. I dunno man, maybe you haven't experienced it, but once you do (and everyone does), I hope you forgive…

Fuck your downvotes.

Re: My Public Apology

#20

Post by palish »

einarvollset wrote: post #18

There are things in life that matter more than others. Startups, money, reputation; all that shit is worthless once you need to deal with the pain of someone dying. Someone taking their own life is one of those things that should cause you to stop and think of his family, friends and wonder what pushed him to this. I dunno man, maybe you haven't experienced it, but once you do (and everyone does), I hope you forgive…

What exactly do you want from him? The mentality "there are some words that should never be forgiven" is just as useless as "we shouldn't take the Lord's name in vain". Relax.
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