If you’ve seen the words “Apology Dinner” trending on Twitter over the past day and had absolutely no idea what was going on, you’re not alone. And clicking on it won’t do much to ease your confusion.
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The nonsense phrase first hit the internet’s radar after a Redditor’s post to the Am I the Asshole subreddit, asking if they did the wrong thing by arranging a potluck situation for their sister’s “Apology Dinner.”
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Throwing capital letters out as if the term actually means something, the user wrote that they took over the planning of their sister’s Apology Dinner as their “mom was busy writing her apology and whatnot.” Realizing that more family members than just their immediate family wanted to attend, the original poster turned it into a pot luck.
“Pot luck is where all the adult guests bring a dish, and all the dishes are shared,” they explained, as if that’s the bit we’re all confused about.
Long story short, sis got mad about the whole thing because “the Apology Meal should be prepared (or at least paid for) by the apologizer…in order to show proper atonement.”
The confusion originated on Reddit, where posters were immediately concerned about whether Apology Dinners are some sort of widely accepted social practice that they had somehow never heard of at all.
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“INFO: what the actual f—k is an Apology Dinner?” reads the top comment.
The OP clarified that their family lives in the United States, with origins in Romania, but that actually didn’t clarify much of anything at all.
“I am a cultural anthropologist with tons of ethnographies on my bookshelves and have never heard of this,” one user wrote.
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The confusion soon spread to Twitter, where no one, simply no one, had heard of this formalized idea of an “Apology Dinner” with specific rules against pot luck and handwritten apologies to be read in front of an entire family.
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The fact that they invited the whole family too. “We were all excited to listen to the apology and eat” w h a t?
“Kids, grab your jackets. Your aunt and cousin fought again we’re having apology dinner with them”
This is so awkward and confusing?— Peeb
(@_SandWitchy_) April 29, 2021
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Once it was pretty firmly established that this is definitely not actually a social norm, the jokes came rolling in.
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Obviously preparing or buying a meal for someone as part of an apology for something you’ve done wrong is a nice gesture, but the idea of some performative apology in front of the entire family rather than a one-on-one conversation feels unnecessary for just about every situation.
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But at the same time, if Apology Dinners become an actual thing in society now thanks to a deleted Reddit post and a deeply confused internet…that feels like an oddly appropriate way for our society to evolve.
*First Published: April 30, 2021, 7:31 am
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