Of course other people do this - the internet is full of trolls who get a kick out of their dishonesty, flame wars and generally selfish and disruptive behaviou

Of course other people do this - the internet is full of trolls who get a kick out of their dishonesty, flame wars and generally selfish and disruptive behaviour. Your justification is that you get a lot of engagement, even to the point of re-directing the conversation to suit your own personal interests. This perfectly fits the pattern of just being a self-interested, attention-seeking troll. Alternatively, have you thought about the parallels to one of the major criticisms of Facebook, namely how their model prioritises engagement over providing value to the consumer? The bit about how sometimes there is something useful posted in the thread is just trying to make yourself feel better. That information would likely have been posted anyway, and perhaps with better rankings if you hadn’t dedicated yourself to lowering the signal-to-noise ratio. If you genuinely appreciated the honest and knowledgeable folks online, you wouldn’t continue to set up situations where they end up getting flamed. The point of an apology is not just to pay lip service to damage already done, it is to change your behaviour so that you do not pointlessly make other people’s lives worse in the future.