this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2025
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For what it's worth, the AI is being used by a lame "alpha bro" account that is being mocked in the meme.
Unrelated, but also worth pointing out to people scrolling by that generally if you know someone wants to hang out you wouldn't start with an apology. So the guy is likely apologizing because he's aware his advances are unwanted but is doing it anyway. The second guy is unlikely to get any traction with people he doesn't already know, and is exemplary as the kind of low effort garbage women complain about on dating apps, or communicating with someone he already has a preexisting relationship with who would already have his address.
I also read it as two gay guys texting each other at first.
Plenty of people lack confidence or have an anxiety disorder, so would be predisposed to assuming that hanging out with them was a burden without any grounds to think so, and potentially feel like they need to include an apology in any invitation. It's obviously not healthy, but it doesn't mean that they're right and that the advances are unwanted.
I said "likely", as I realize that's not always the case, but in my experience social anxiety is more likely to manifest in "I totally understand if not" than starting out with an apology in this context. That's just my experience, but starting with an apology is often "nice guy" behavior, which makes sense because a lot of the "alpha" accounts are actually appealing to "nice guys" and not just guys who are nice that happen to have social anxiety.
That's fair. As a socially anxious guy, I probably would go for the "If you want" and/or "If you can't/don't want to that's ok" route.
I wouldn't necessarily say that the person on the left in the picture is aware the advance is unwanted, though. Of course, it's an AI picture, that guy does not exist, but speaking of a hypothetical person with even worse social anxiety than even myself, I could see one like that using "Sorry". Not because he knows that the advance is unwanted (though it could be that he knows, it just depends by case), but because he assumes any advances from him will be unwanted. Getting rejected every single time would make it hard to assume "Ok but surely next time will be ok", and so you would operate, from the start, under the assumption that the other person doesn't want to talk to you.
I don't know if my point is coming across too well, but basically what I'm trying to say is this: Once you get to the point where you think every single interaction coming from you is unwanted (which is probably false. Even if most are, it's highly unlikely all are), then you kinda stop differentiating between when someone actually doesn't want to talk to you, and when you're overthinking but you're actually incorrect. So if the guy would stop trying to interact with people he thinks don't want to talk to him, he'd essentially stop trying to interact period.
At a certain point it doesn't matter if he knows or assumes. The end result is internally he on some level thinks the advance is unwanted. If I didn't know, but I assumed someone didn't want to date me I wouldn't ask them out. If you're operating "under the assumption that the other person doesn't want to talk to you" why are you wanting to date them? I only want to date people that want to at least talk to me. That's part of what contributes to my assessment it is a nice guy scenario. A legitimately nice person who believed someone didn't want to talk to/go out with them would not still ask them out just because they can add a "sorry" beforehand.
I know and have dated a lot of socially anxious people, and in my experience the apology is generally nice guy behavior. Maybe it ends up being a feedback loop of social anxiety>low social skills>less likely to get a date>resentment builds>lashing out, so social anxiety tends to be more associated with nice guy behavior, but I think social anxiety isn't the underlying factor here and it's actually low social skills more than social anxiety. I generally do not see social anxiety manifest in an apology like that. I'm sure some actual nice people have opened with apologies, and obviously I recognize it's a social skill issue, but that doesn't really change my read of it or my personal experience. Again, totally possible to apologize and not be rude after, but that's generally not been my experience. If they're apologizing for the act of reaching out in my experience it's generally that the first message is rude or there will be rude follow up messages.
I can't speak to your experience, but it seems like even you say you would be more likely to express your social anxiety in an "opt out" option. I think that's a level of social skill above the apology, and that level may contribute to you knowing that being rude is not going to help yourself. Maybe it's just that people without the social skill to go the "opt out" route instead of the apology route are more likely to be unable to handle social rejection and more likely to fall into antisocial behavior. Just speaking from my experience and the experience of the collective of women I'm in community with.
I wasn't necessarily disagreeing with you. My comment was to show a different perspective, not to dismiss or argue against yours. Or rather, not all of it. Cause I do agree on the "Sorry" VS "opt-out" part.
Here I would add something, though. If this person doesn't see a path to success with any woman, I don't think he should necessarily give up, because at least some of the "There's no way it'd work" would be false. Some will be correct, but because of the constant rejection the guy faced, he will be assuming all are under the "There's no way it'd work"-umbrella. So if he stops pursuing a relationship in general in order to avoid women who will reject him (which, in his mind, would be everyone), it'd become a self-fullfilling prophecy: He thinks no girl would be in a relationship with him, therefore he stops trying, therefore no girl would be in a relationship with him.
To be clear though, I'm not advocating for asking out someone who is actively avoiding you, or someone who already made it clear in some way that she's not romantically interested. Like if you confess and she says no, he should give up, yes. But not before it's confirmed that his suspicion is correct. I've been rejected many times, all times so far, in fact. I have always stopped the romantic approach towards that person once I knew they didn't like me romantically. A couple I'm still friends with to this day. Others that I wasn't particularly as close with before, no, especially once the thing keeping us together ended (as an example, a high school crush after high school was over).