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Comment by wayoutthere | Hacker News Reader

“Third world” is a dumb term to use because it’s based on the Cold War where the USSR was the “second world” and that shit hasn’t existed for over 30 years. Developing / underdeveloped are better, far less amorphous terms. Agree it’s not really offensive, but it is a poor choice of words for reasons completely unrelated to political correctness.

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At least its better than "global south". It was rediculous when people would start talking about "global north" countries like Australia.

Yep, all these workarounds get used because some people force their sensibilities on everybody else. Obviously, the real divide is between "rich" and "poor" countries, but it's too "cruel" or "crass" to call things what they are. It seems that the poor don't mind that much, but the term is especially offensive for the rich, as it induces guilt in some of them and a fear of retribution in others. Anyway, whatever else is used in place of rich/poor, is bound to comically fall flat on its face, i.e.:

- "third world" should include Switzerland and Austria, as they were neutral during the cold war

- "developing countries" should not include places in major wars or civil wars (such as for example not Yemen), as they're clearly not developing, but rather deteriorating.

- as you point out, "global south" should include the wealthy Australia.

It also expands into other examples of hypocrisy, such as the term "African-American", which is just an euphemism for black Americans (which itself suggest that being black is bad somehow), but due to its clumsiness also includes lots of non-black people, such as Tunesian-Americans (no black people there).

Everybody knows that history , terms change with time, as someone who has lived all his life in the 3rd world, I have never met even 1 person who is offended by the term (I have met online a lot of first-worlders offended though). We use the term as sarcastic self-mockery and as encompassing umbrella to identify ourselves with nations all over the world under the same predicaments. Proud tercermundista here.

> We use the term as sarcastic self-mockery and as encompassing umbrella to identify ourselves with nations all over the world under the same predicaments.

Yes, that's it. You said it better than I did.

As a first worlder, it never occurred to me that there was a second world so TIL

I had no idea it was related to the USSR at all and had just assumed third world strictly meant a poor nation

Indeed it is very dumb because it does not categorise countries by development, in actuality is it only about their political alignment - 'neutral' countries were third world.

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