A Public Apology To The Filipino Writers Community

This article will serve as my public apology for everyone I have offended in regards to my recent article that I already unpublished after 6 hours since it was posted.

I did not read all of the comments since I was asleep 2 hours after I published it. However, I saw a few comments from my notification that made me change my mind.

That article, by the way, was to apologize as an author, not as a whole group. I felt like I had to apologize for not being good enough, for posting nonsense, and so on.

The article was also incomplete, and I only realized the missing part after talking to a friend but decided not to edit it anyway. Well, as I've said, the damage has been done and so, I can't undo it anymore.

My previous article is probably a big turn-off to many of my fellow Filipinos for apologizing for something that I should never do in the first place. Now, I feel like I owe big time to the entire Filipino Writers Community, especially to my Club1BCH Fam, and so I hope you'll forgive me for posting that.

I know posting such would neither end the issue nor have him apologize for saying harsh words towards us. Yet, I still posted it without thinking about the possible effects or how you guys would feel about it.

So from the bottom of my heart, SORRY.

Sorry for saying sorry.

Sorry for apologizing when he's the one who should apologize for offending us. For calling us something he's not supposed to say.

Sorry for writing an article that only causes another unnecessary result, which might also affect the friendship between us. I feel like I don't deserve the community anymore.

Sorry for saying sorry again. I know some of you might think, "that's the result of writing an article without thinking or publishing without thinking."

Sorry for writing that article and did not write this instead:

To you.

Sorry but not sorry if most of us don't write the way you do. It's not like it's mandatory here to write like a pro or that our English should be 100% grammatical-error-free. As long as it's readable enough, then this shouldn't be an issue.

Sorry but not sorry if some of us write TagLish (Tagalog-English) and not pure English. Well, the admin already said that we are free to write in our dialect. So why making this an issue? It is not our fault that some of you only speak one language while most of us are bilingual.

Sorry but not sorry if you think our articles are not good enough. Again, the admin didn't require us to write something award-winning kind of article. As long as it's original and publish here first, then we're good.

Sorry but not sorry if you think writing about our day-to-day life experience or sharing about the recipe on how to make a pancake is considered a low-quality article to you. Again, each one of us is free to write whatever topic we want as long as it's not against the rules. So this shouldn't be an issue in the first place.

Sorry but not sorry for calling our friends sis/bro. I didn't know addressing a friend like this could be an issue. Just to give you an idea, in my poor country, Philippines, we do respect people, whether they're a relative or a total stranger. We don't care if they're the poorest of the poor, we still call them ate (older sister) or kuya (older brother).

Since this is a virtual world and for some reason, we believe that everyone is equal, so regardless of age, nationality, or religion, we like addressing them that way. Some of us don't use the sis/bro, others would go for madam/boss, depending on the level of friendship they have.

In my case, as explained in my deleted post, I like sis because that is how most of the Pakistani, Hindi friends like to address, so in return, I also applied that term even if I used to hate it.

Sorry but not sorry if we support our own kind. We are like a big family, regardless if you're new or not, as long as you follow the rules, then we'd gladly welcome you on our side. And no, we definitely don't promote that "support me, support you back" if that's what's on your mind. That kind of support is too stressful, so we just do it genuinely. I personally hate that kind of support too.

Sorry but not sorry if some of us liked that post. You know what I mean so no need to elaborate on this part. Some of us just might have liked the article simply because we liked how he tried to explain his side without being arrogant.

Sorry but not sorry if we accidentally liked articles that could have been marked as plagiarized. It's not our fault that the plagiarism detector was outdated and couldn't detect better. It's not like we have plenty of time to check each article before reading, commenting, upvoting them. Besides, seeing people publishing out-of-this-world articles is not new to us. Anyone can be anything in the world of writing. The fact that it has EXC on it, then that's enough reason for us to believe that the article is 100% plagiarism-free.

Sorry but not sorry but I feel like you also owe us a Public Apology. First off, you generalize us all as what? Spammers? Cheaters? Plagiarists? First and foremost, we won't survive here if we were any of those. Yes, there are many spammers from my country, but that didn't make us all spammers.

Many of us are trying to provide good quality content every single day. Yes, not as good as yours but definitely not the worst either. We work hard to be on this level now. We never cheat. Does upvoting a Filipino writer because we enjoy his/her article consider cheating to you? I don't think so.

The way you described us is an insult and against the rules by the way. I wanted to include a few screenshots of your harsh words but nah. I prefer not to, but I'm glad I have a screenshot to prove to you that what you did to us is against the rules.

You are known for being strict when it comes to plagiarism, and we applaud you for that. You did an excellent job there, but you could have just done it a nice way. You are a pro, and you could just guide these people in a better approach to be on the same path as you do.

Unfortunately, this is not what I wrote and my approached was different. This is why I feel the need to do a public apology to my fellow Filipino people for writing a different one, and I am so SORRY for that.

Closing thoughts

I don't know if you can still forgive me but if not, I'll just serve this as a lesson to think better before publishing anything.

Again, to the entire Filipino Writers Community, Sorry.