this post was submitted on 24 Apr 2025
34 points (82.7% liked)
Asklemmy
47694 readers
724 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- [email protected]: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~
founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
For what it's worth, I would have appreciated as a victim if my bullies seeked me out and truly apologized to me. It would've restored a little faith in humanity. I don't care now anymore, but there was a time.
Of course, any feeling that the apology was fake or forced would have ruined the whole thing and had the opposite effect.
I've had it happen to me twice surprisingly enough.
The first one was genuinely sorry and apologized to the point it was almost annoying. He actually had tears in his eyes welling up, which shocked me, as he was 6'6" (203cm) and probably 300 pounds with very little body fat, full beard, just a terrifying looking massive man. Hargid from Harry Potter. I learned later that he regularly volunteered at a local food pantry among other things and really seemed to have turned around since high school.
The other one was a guy who was friends with the first one, back in high school. He didn't know the other guy had apologized and turned his life around. He gave a half assed apology but was only there as a friend of one of my friends and didn't know who i was at first, not until i mentioned where i went to school casually. i could tell he didn't really care. later that week he waited outside my apartment for me to leave for work, broke in, stole a guitar and an amp, then pawned them for heroin money. i only learned who it was that broke in after my friend who brought the guy, found out and apologized for bringing him over.
It's a weird world sometimes. never know how people will turn out.
Interesting. Thanks for sharing. How did those encounters affect you?
The first one gave me some hope in humanity. The second one took some away. I think I'm more cautious now with people but at the same time I try to be forgiving more, just in case. I don't like to brag about my good deeds I've done, since I believe some people see that as a form of weakness and will target people who appear nice. Sometimes it can be hard to be uncaring however. Overall I'd say they didn't change much about me, they were simply a form of building experience.