We now go over live to the Old Bailey, where a statement is being read out by the defendant's solicitor …

"I'm sorry if people have taken offence at anything I said. It was not my intention to upset anyone by calling them whiny, sanctimonious toddlers who clearly need to be affronted in order to feel alive. I regret that my words were taken out of context to infer something hurtful then used maliciously against me. I am deeply wounded that anyone could think so ill of me. My reputation for fair comment has been besmirched in a most cavalier fashion. I have to tell you, with a heavy heart, that my apology has been gravely impacted by this wilful misinterpretation. I believe I am now owed an apology by those who have exploited my predicament for their own cruel amusement."

Of course, it is ridiculous to imagine that someone could go from a grudging apologiser to the aggrieved victim of an inferred hate campaign in the space of a single paragraph. Ridiculous, if you never see a newspaper and don't use social media.

An aggressive apology is probably occurring less than 12 feet away if you're reading this in a bus queue. That woman in the bobble hat, jabbing at her phone with fingerless gloves. She's honing a 140-character putdown in the form of a sarcastic apology for being "too trusting and open", adding the emoji for "staring into middle distance, nursing a broken heart".

That young man in the ironic stubble is listening to Test Match Special. Geoffrey Boycott's on, doing his Yorkshire Apology. That's when you start a sentence with "I'm sorry", but you're not actually sorry at all. As in: "I'm sorry, but my mum could've caught that in 'er pinny." Or: "I'm sorry, but my mum could've 'it that wi' a stick o' rhubarb." Basically, the Yorkshire Apology is an expression of annoyance that you've had to apologise for someone else's appalling behaviour and that they've made you mention your late mother in whatever circumstances, wi' or wi'out rhubarb.

That guy standing a little apart from everyone else, whispering into one of those tiny phones you attach to your ear, the ones that look like a child's kazoo. He's a customer complaints manager for a well-known retailer. Hissing at an intern, telling her he doesn't want her apology, he wants her to fix the problem. Apparently, a customer had complained and the intern had neglected to send out the standard email regretting that on this occasion the company had fallen below the high standards it sets itself, and apologising for any inconvenience caused. Actually, sorry, I don't think this bloke's in the bus queue at all. I've decided that as he's middle management, he must be a Tory and he's waiting for a cab. Remember Margaret Thatcher's famous words: "Any man over the age of 26 using public transport is a socialist, which is why no decent person has been on a bus since they were in the fifth form …"

Does anyone ever apologise these days for being bang out of order? It's now all about collateral damage limitation – "sorry if I caused offence". I blame Twitter. Not just for this. For everything. But especially for this. Twitter is an international stock exchange for the trading of grievances, and apology is its bitcoin. And any currency can become massively devalued.

Twitter's round-the-clock huff and chaff was a gift for online news in a recession. The ubiquitous fat, blue, chirpy harbinger of bathos took off just as the world economy was driven into a brick wall by the sort of people who wear communications kazoos on their ears. Newspapers had to slash their budgets yet expand their internet operations; had to spend less on journalism yet serve a jaded audience demanding drizzling news 24 hours a day. Twitter's echoing torture chamber is the perfect solution. Just get people trawling keywords, locate some potential umbrage and that's a story. Suddenly "pressure is growing" for X to apologise for Y, backed up by a single spluttering tweet from some busybollocks called @twirlyshirl who's got an animated loop of baby pandas on a slide as her avatar.

Mandela died. The world paid tribute. Then the Twitter harvest of apology demands began. Comedian Simon Amstell "suggested there was racial segregation between Radio 1 and Radio 1Xtra and that Mandela would not approve". Two hours of synthetic outrage later, and Amstell is obliged to "tweet an apology" for a weak joke with the word "Mandela" in it. The Czech prime minister had to apologise after he was recorded privately moaning about having to go to Mandela's funeral because he had something else on and it was a long way away. The news director of the BBC (NB "a taxpayer-funded corporation") had to defend its coverage after some viewers complained it had bumped a rolling story about floods AND interrupted an episode of Mrs Brown's Boys. His compliant, sort-of-apology – "I'm sorry if people felt as though we didn't inform them properly of what was happening with the weather" – was classic.

It's getting worse. Paul Walker, a star of the The Fast and the Furious films, died recently. Two days later an answer on a game show was "The Fast and the Furious", and the producer had to apologise for any distress caused. People have to apologise now for coincidence? For unforeseen context? God almighty, what a sorry world we live in.