Sorry Not Sorry
So which one is it, anyways?
The popular catchphrase “sorry not sorry,” famously songified by former Barney & Friends costar Demi Lovato, is a source of anxiety and confusion for many Americans. Obviously enough, the fundamental question with regards to “sorry not sorry” is whether a given speaker of this oxymoron is or is not sorry. This article makes no claim to answer that question head-on. Instead, its purpose is to (a) survey contemporary attitudes towards “sorry not sorry” — discussion of which is markedly polarized — (b) unpack the logic underpinning these attitudes, and (c) sketch the outlines of a “third way” out of our semantic quagmire.
Jeanine Elmore, an adjunct professor of semiology at Hendrix College and one of the foremost apologists of “sorry not sorry” culture, recently took to Twitter to argue that “sorry not sorry” is in itself an apology — an ostensibly insincere apology for one’s own inability to make a sincerer one. According to Elmore, “sorry not sorry” really means “sorry I’m not sorrier,” and therefore represents genuine remorse, remorse that is made all the more genuine, moreover, by the fact that the speaker makes no attempt to exaggerate it.
The “ostensible insincerity” of the remark, which some critics point to as indicative of a lack of fellow-feeling and/or civic-mindedness amongst millennials and/or gen Z “zoomers,” is, per Elmore, only ostensible, and not at all actual. By way of counterpoint, Elmore urges readers to consider the equally familiar phenomenon of ostensibly sincere but actually fake and utterly worthless apologies, the likes of which we Americans have grown so accustomed to hearing from politicians, cheating spouses, sexual predators, and cancelled celebrities.
Elmore proposes that we group these non-apologies under the moniker “not sorry sorry,” though this coinage, predictably enough, has yet to catch on. Still, Elmore’s stance appears to resonate with a great number of Internet people, judging by the 10.4k likes and 740 retweets of the pinned tweet atop her personal Twitter page.
Meanwhile, the most outspoken critics of “sorry not sorry” make precisely the opposite claim. By their lights, the “sorry” in no way overrides the “not sorry.” Quite the contrary: it adds insult to injury, effectively hitting the offended party with a sort of pump-fake before reverting to the wholeheartedly “not sorry” stance (in another basketball analogy, the “sorry” would be the alley and the “not sorry” the oop). To say “sorry not sorry” is really to say “I’m not sorry that I’m not sorry” — in other words, to express no sorriness whatsoever.
Anecdotally, while researching this article I polled my extended family and found that 42/53 (79 percent) agreed that “sorry not sorry” indeed means “I’m not sorry that I’m not sorry.” Granted, this is a small sample size, and most my family members reside in Tuscany, so the language barrier may well have skewed my results.
There are, of course, other interpretations that fall somewhere in between the two prevailing camps. On a recent podcast appearance, skater and Internet personality Steve-U outlined a more moderate critique, suggesting that the use of “sorry not sorry” might in fact be a defense mechanism intended to short-circuit genuine remorse on the part of the speaker. In Steve-U’s framework, “sorry not sorry” would actually paradoxically mean “sorry not not sorry” or, in plainer English, “I’m sorry that I am sorry,” — i.e. I for whatever reason regret being sorry and will attempt to conceal my remorse rather than copping to it.
Compelling as this apparent compromise may appear, it evinces the same bias that fatally undermines Elmore’s argument: an unfounded privileging of the “sorry” over the “not sorry” (versus the equally unfounded privileging of the “not sorry” over the “sorry” of which 4/5 members of my extended family are guilty). In order to assess this phenomenon in a more rational way moving forward, I propose that we instead assign equivalent weight to the “sorry” and the “not sorry,” irregardless of the one or the other’s placement within the phrase. We must thus treat “sorry not sorry” as a self-cancelling operation, roughly equivalent to a well-stifled belch.
In short, whosoever pronounces the phrase “sorry not sorry” cannot be judged to be either sorry or not sorry on the basis of the phrase alone. The phrase conveys nothing, and anyone unfortunate enough to hear it uttered aloud will have to rely on other situational indicators in order to determine whether the speaker is indeed sorry or not.
