exhibit #894057 of why the internet gives you bad social skills
on tumblr, if you do something that makes people upset or angry, not apologizing immediately is read as "doubling down" and seen as a reason to intensify anger. for example, let's say you call a gay ship you happen to dislike "disgusting" and people get mad because that sounded like you're calling gay people disgusting. if you don't understand at first why they're mad, you might ask them why they're so angry, or joke that they must really love the ship. this then leads to more anger towards you, because you're "doubling down" and "refusing to apologize for homophobia." however, if you immediately delete the post and apologize, the anger might stop.
but it doesn't work that way in real life. for example, let's say you bring a plate of peanut butter cookies over to your friend's apartment, and they get really upset with you. you can immediately apologize and run away to throw out the cookies, but that might make your friend more confused or annoyed with you because why are you wasting food, no don't bring them in the kitchen too, we were supposed to hang out. but if you ask "what did i do?" and it turns out you forgot that their roommate was allergic and now they're going to have to deep clean the entire front room, you can offer to help clean up and maybe you can go to the park to eat the cookies. so it's better to ask what you did wrong in real life, because that means that you can help make things less bad.
