Shame is a such an important concept, and something that I've felt - for a while now - that TREACLES/ARSECULTists get actively pushed away from feeling. It's like everyone in that group practices justifying every single action they make - longtermists with the wellbeing of infinite imagined people, utilitarians with magic math, rationalists with 10,000 word essays. "No, we didn't make a mistake, we did everything we could with the evidence we had, we have nothing to be sorry for."

Like no, you're not god, sometimes you just fuck up. And if you do fuck up and you want me to be able to care about you, I need to be able to sympathize with you by seeing that you actually care about your mistakes and their consequences like I would.

The original poster just can't fathom the idea of losing something as precious as social status, and needs the apology to somehow be beneficial to him, instead of - y'know - the person they're apologizing to. It's just too shameful to lower yourself to someone else like that, he needs to be gaining ground as well. So weird.