gauauu wrote: ↑Fri Sep 18, 2020 9:32 am
No, definitely not that. Mistakes are forgivable. The important part is being willing to apologize and take feedback if you get it wrong. If anyone gives you crap over something after you retract mistakes and sincerely apologize*, they can stick it in the dirt.
* That said, it needs to be a real, non-weasel apology. Own the mistake, sincerely apologize, and make changes.
Oh man, that just reminded me of some times when I made some horrible apologies.
There was a forum for a webcomic I read, and - let's see what was it - I think people were posting demotivational posters, and I tried to make some. One was some pun based off of some rock song, I honestly don't recall what. And the other included a jab toward homosexuality. Honestly, I was trying to poke at the popular opinion toward homosexuality, but well, let's just say I didn't think it through. It didn't carry any of the tone I had originally thought it had.
Honestly the reaction I got right away was polite, but also informed me that I done effed up. And if I had just apologized and removed my post, maybe that could have been the end of it. But oh no, I was NOT done being an idiot that day.
What I did was I deleted the entry I had made on the site where the image was generated/hosted. I expected that this would delete the image and my post would merely show a broken link. It didn't, and instead of then editing my post to just remove the image outright, I decided "eh it probably will just take an hour for it to get removed form the system, so that's good enough."
And then I decided to try to do some damage control. My plan was to try to shift focus away from the offending image to the other one I had made. (After all, the offending content would soon be disappeared from the internet forever, I'm sure, so let's talk about my other contribution instead!) I don't recall exactly what I said, but let's just say that it was about as well-thought-out as the original demotivational poster I made. I believe I made a simple quick apology, and then tried to talk about the one with the musical reference. And looking back later, I realized that effectively what I said made it sound like I thought people were offended by some 80's metal reference, and not the jab at homosexuality. Like I made a post, and saw people acting in a fuss, and then acted like it was so much not-a-big-deal that I thought people were offended by the music reference.
From time to time I think about how I must have looked to those people.
So yeah, be sincere with your apologies. Actually try to
correct your mistakes; don't just try to cover them up.