your tribe by trying to distance yourself from the offender and thereby making your “apology” more about mitigating the damage it did to your brand than expressing actual regret for the victim.

It may seem subtle, but it’s a clear and important difference when you look through responses to things like this.

Some people clearly just feel bad for the kid and want him to know that they do t feel the same way and want to support him.

Others are more interested in making sure the Twitterverse knows that “most of us aren’t like him” so don’t think of us like that.

One went so far as to say this dentist Ute is “BYU-like”. Does that feel like an apology or tribal defense?

So yeah, there are lots of ways to respond, and they may sound the same at first, but they’re very different. One key to apologizing well is to not have your focus on how it makes *you* look.