What Exactly is Dan Ayoub Apologizing for?

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Why would OP ask us instead of watching a bunch of videos on youtube about it? 

 

The internet has a long history of people "just asking questions" to get other people talking about a topic they wouldn't otherwise have been talking about

As Davyd has pointed out, OP claimed from the jump they'd already seen videos (plural) in which Ayoub said he was doing an apology tour. No videos with Ayoub saying that have actually been provided though, and the only example of the phrase "apology tour" being used in connection with him comes from what can charitably be described as a completely unreliable source

Something doesn't add up there

 
Oh yes i know. I have been around long enough to see many many "just asking questions" trolls and I know they have a style to them that is absent here.
Let's also remember that "Seen Videos" is slightly ambiguous in that it can both mean "Watched the video" and "Seen it in my feed but didn't watch it."
I grew up on the internet and in doing so know there are some people who ask questions to start fights and then there are those that ask to find answers.
This didn't have the twists and escalations that are the tells I know for trolls., at least as far as i can see.

If we explode at everyone who 'seems off' then we have just made this place hostile to people on the spectrum, people who don't have English as a primary language, younger posters who don't know forum norms yet, and anyone we come across when having a bad day. Sometimes those suspicions are wrong.  

 Nobody exploded at anyone though. Davyd found the claims suspicious - a feeling shared by myself and other posters - and said so in plain and by no means hostile language.

Meanwhile sealioning is a frequent problem, with posters asking questions in a purportedly innocent manner but with the intent of stirring up a hornet's nest. The ruse starts by putting on a faux polite affectation, asking a question around a contentious topic to create ire, and continually asking inflammatory questions or making inflammatory statements that are worded politely but intended to offend. It's a tiring method of trolling because by design the troll follows the letter of the rules and tend to skirt moderation.

 
You haven't brought up anything that my previous statement hasn't addressed. My statement was subject was "Use discernment." 
You are also taking general colloquial use of something and going "That didn't happen here specifically." I could be well within grounds to accuse you of trolling.
But you aren't. At least I don't think you are. You are just making a mistake or missing my point. Neither of which is a sin.
Dayvd's wording is also more than a little abrasive and escalating. But he is also not a troll, i have just been around long enough to know that is who he is. He was like that on the Discord years ago.

Again i Have been around the internet awhile. I am aware of the issue, and i am also aware of what happens when every awkwardness is treated like a troll. It is not conducive to a safe environment.
Don't become the problem you are trying to stomp out.

Maybe model the behavior you're demanding of others.

When someone says, "I'm just asking questions", that carries the same energy as someone at the table saying, "It's what my character would do!" 

imho

May I propose just letting this thread die?

Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis. Requiescant in pace. Amen.

So after some digging, I may have found the source of the "apology tour" claim. It's the name of a video "reacting" to the D&D Past and Future Panel with Luke and Dan - GaryCon video recorded by Crit Hit The Giant. The reaction video however I will not link because the individual throws out a lot of slurs, political language, and other things that would not only break forum rules, but also simply expresses a lot of nonsense that I wouldn't ever signal boost. His video calls the panel an apology tour (amongst other things including a lot of pejorative uses of "woke").

The closest we get to the word "apology" from Dan in that video is when he starts discussing the Community Council where he says

I am vastly aware of the missteps, you know, I think we have made in the past and I think, you know, you've said it well—it's good, we need to back up these words with actions, right? Consistency. Because I think we've said stuff in the past that we haven't followed up with. Certainly the commitment you're gonna here from me and everybody here is we will continue to back up these words with actions.

I did some further digging down the Garycon rabbit hole (even though that's not the event the OP insinuated the so called videos were from) because I'm still giving them the benefit of the doubt and it's the closest I've got to anything matching their "claims". There's also the Wizard of the Coast Press Briefing - GaryCon 2026, again recorded by Crit Hit The Giant. And that thread leads to a slightly closer to an "apology" quote at around the 5m mark

I firmly believe I'm standing on the shoulders of giants, right? I mean, look around here today at the players, the creators that came before us, why this thing is here today. And candidly I think that's a thread we've lost, we've lost a little bit of the path. And I think one of the things I said in the first week was "I wanna meet Luke [Gygax], I wanna stand with him, we've gotta just mend whatever rift has kinda come between the [Gygax] family and the franchise because this is is BS", and it was Joe, Joe Manganiello, and kinda authored, authored us coming together for dinner, I think you got pretty emotional over the course of that dinner talking about what D&D means to us and were just like "We're the two that can fix this, let's just ******* get together and do some stuff together" and it seems like an eternity ago but here we are today

So we have no actual "apology tour" comment beyond this youtube video I alluded to, but I don't want to attribute that to being where the OP picked up the particular language because that would be very telling and maybe might be casting unpleasant aspersions on them. So I looped back to that facebook link they shared in this post. That's a post from "Fandom Pulse" and I didn't give it much consideration at first. However, after finding the "apology tour video" I decided to dig into Fandom Pulse and their other posts, and found there's not a lot of difference between them and the youtube video—transphobia (misgendering and deadnaming Lily Wachowski), signal boosting the opinions of the Elongate Muskrat, advocating for AI usage in TTRPGs and gaming, lots of gatekeeping especially around marginalized groups in gaming. Basically an absolute garbage page.

So yeah, my operating theory is that this "question" wasn't asked out of ignorance as to the circumstances surrounding the claimed (and seemingly debunked) quote, but as an attempt to provide discontent and dogwhistle to likeminded folks to descend on the thread and cause trouble. 

I could be completely wrong, but nothing points to the contrary, not even the OPs own interactions.