Apology Culture and the New Flagellants

Word Misappropriation. A verbal series. Part 5.

The best apology a person can give is to do better in the future.

And yet, there’s a whole culture of apology that has been formed.  There are apologetic tweets, statements and media tours for the more prolific amongst us. Apology videos on YouTube tend to all be so similar that there’s now a subset of people making videos satirizing them. You can pretty much guess how they’ll go.

In fact, it has become so popular to apologize that many do it without having even done anything to actually apologize for.

Canadians, in particular, are so infatuated with the art of apology that they can’t help but apologize to inanimate objects when they accidentally bump into them.

Is it a type of “areligious” self-flagellation, perhaps?  In actual religion, flagellation is the disciplinary or devotional practice of beating one’s self with whips (or other tools)—a way towards purification. Some may argue: masochism. Self-flagellation is often also seen as a form of punishment and penance.

Now, there’s nothing…