A 2023 Column Contest grand-prize winner, Laurence Pevsner’s Sorry Not Sorry investigates why we’re sick of everyone apologizing all the time—and how the collapse of the public apology leaves little room for forgiveness and grace in our politics and culture.
Last month, a Korean pop star and a legendary MMA fighter found themselves doing the same thing: apologizing for their apologies. BTS’s Suga had drunk driven an electric scooter, while Ronda Rousey had shared a Sandy Hook conspiracy video. They both immediately apologized—and then they both had to apologize again, for the shortness and shallowness of their initial apologies.
Suga—a member of arguably the most popular band ever—posted his first apology on August 7, admitting he rode “an electric kickboard home last night, after having drinks with dinner.” Police later clarified that it was an electric scooter, not a kickboard. According to a translation on Koreaboo, Suga wrote: “Although no one was hurt, and no property was damaged, this is inexcusably something I have to take responsibility for, and I apologize to everyone.”
The public reaction was swift and merciless. Here are a few of the comments Koreaboo highlighted and translated: “I mean, why is he adding unnecessary words (that there weren’t any victims)?” “I hate the fact that his and HYBE’s apology emphasizes that there weren’t any victims who were harmed.” “His apology makes this even worse.”
The commentators here are touching on a deep point, one outlined by the philosopher Thomas Nagel in his famous essay “Moral Luck.” Nagel asks a deceptively simple question: Why do we treat a drunk driver who swerves onto a curb and hits someone differently than a drunk driver who swerves onto a curb, but it happens to be that no one is there? The driver’s actions in both cases are the same—they just got “morally lucky” if no one was there. Shouldn’t we hold people accountable for their intents and actions, regardless of outcome?
I take this to be what the commentators are upset about—by emphasizing the lack of victims, Suga is implicitly arguing that the incident should be taken less seriously than if someone had gotten hurt. Whether you agree with Nagel or not, at the very least, reasonable people disagree on how culpable you ought to be in this kind of “morally lucky” scenario. With his apology, Suga upset those who thought he ought to be more culpable and, therefore, more apologetic.
So Suga apologized again, this time in the form of a picture of a handwritten letter—another evolution in the technology of apology and a novel attempt at conveying sincerity. This letter was longer, more detailed, and specifically called out “the confusion my hasty first apology on August 7 caused.” “I should have thought more deeply and been more careful,” he wrote. Funny—I think I wrote that same line in my sophomore year “Normative Ethics” final paper after reading Nagel.
Celebrities often make this kind of double-tap apology because public figures tend to apologize quickly and badly. This repeat mistake occurs because the same conditions recur: the public figure is panicked and wants to downplay the incident, and they aren’t used to being told they’re wrong. So they hope a short statement of acknowledgment and apology will suffice, which in itself seems like a big deal to them. But they try to make themselves look good and minimize what they’ve done—a human instinct only magnified by the powerful and worshiped—and in our culture, apologies get scrutinized and picked apart. When the apology inevitably fails in some important way, the public figure is called upon to try again and, as the BTS song goes, “make it right.”
The scrutiny might be immediate, or it might take decades. Even if you think you got away with your Insta-apology, the internet never forgets. In a Reddit “Ask Me Anything” thread to promote her new book, the legendary MMA fighter and Olympic medalist Ronda Rousey’s promotion went awry when she was pointedly asked by Reddit user thekydragon about her inadequate apology after retweeting a Sandy Hook conspiracy video.
Over a decade ago, you tweeted “I never meant to insult or hurt anyone, sorry if anyone was offended. It was not my intention in the least” after sharing a video that you called “must-watch” and “interesting” that had claimed the Sandy Hook School Massacre was part of a government conspiracy. Considering 20 children were slaughtered and one was shot as many as 11 times, is it fair to say that you owe a much better public apology than the one you issued?
Rousey responded by posting a long and heartfelt apology on X/Twitter that earned her praise. She noted that somehow the media had never asked her about this and that she had “drafted a thousandth [sic] apology to include in my last memoir, but my publisher begged me to take it out.” She convinced herself another apology would do more harm than good and “lead more people down the black hole of conspiracy bullshit.”
She bolded the next part of her statement: “I apologize that this came 11 years too late, but to those affected by the Sandy Hook massacre, from the bottom of my heart and from the depth of my soul I am so so sorry for the hurt I caused.” She called sharing the video “the single most regrettable decision” of her life, and concluded by addressing those who might still be falling for these videos, telling them, “No matter how long you’ve gone down the wrong road, you should still turn back.”
I was moved by Rousey’s apology. Yes, she gave it because she was called out. But the apology is specific, thoughtful, and total. She explains the dark place that led her to the video and why she hasn’t commented on it since her initial apology, without letting herself off the hook. Instead of claiming there were no real victims, she directs her apology right to those she harmed (the families and survivors of Sandy Hook) and doesn’t equivocate on those injuries for a second. In fact, she says she still deserves to be canceled, to “lose out on every opportunity.” She writes that she will regret her actions until the day she dies, and I, for one, believe her.
Though her apology is late, time worked in Rousey’s favor here. She’s clearly had time to reconsider her actions, to draft all those apologies, and to really think through her own culpability. Accepting our mistakes is hard, and it’s especially hard in the moment. It’s smart to apologize as soon as you’ve wronged someone. But it’s better to give a good apology late than a bad apology right away. The best time for an apology is when you’ve had time, in the words of a certain Korean pop star philosopher, to think more deeply and be more careful.