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Comment by ripdog | Hacker News Reader

It's incredibly obnoxious when people type "in my country" as if we're all supposed to just... know where they live. It's also incredibly common. Why do people do this?

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The actual country is not relevant, the important part is that countries exist where this is the case. Mentioning the specific country invites potential bias that means people may not take the concern seriously, thinking their country wouldn't do the same.

I usually say that to let people know: I'm not from the US and i'm not comfortable letting people know which country i am living in.

Image asking someone where they’re from only to be told a US state, and only the state.

Apart from Georgia, I don't see how this could be a problem

> Image asking someone where they’re from only to be told a US state, and only the state.

Atlanta or Tbilisi?

Asking where somebody's from and having them respond with the state is not unreasonable -- you can already tell they’re American from the accent. The US is huge, about half of its states have more land area than half of the countries in the world. Asking where someone is from and receiving "the US" in response is about as informative as someone from Europe replying "Europe". Like yeah, obviously, I could tell by your accent, but where in Europe?

Funny thing is that americans do that all the time, even in international settings like a coworking space full of expats. Everybody introducing themselves with a "hi, I'm from this country", except americans telling their state or city. Are they expecting us to be familiar with their geography, or just unaware of alternative geographical frames of reference?

I don't think that is strange at all. If you can reasonable assume the person you are talking to is aware of e.g. England, Minnesota, Scotland, Tasmania, Sicily or what not you can go straight for that?

Do you assume everybody is able to recognize Americans or Europeans "from their accent" ?

Americans? Honestly, yes. If not, what good is this cultural imperialism after all?

I'd think passive recognition of a fair few states would be a pretty low bar for relatively educated, English-speaking people. It's a pretty low bar, just placing a region with its country. People also regularly just assume that level of knowledge for globally- or culturally-relevant cities.

Maybe I think too highly of people, but I'd also imagine most would be able to get say... 6/10 right, for which countries the following list is from:

- Flanders

- Nova Scotia

- Brandenburg

- Guangzhou

- Tasmania

- Minas Gerais

- Catalonia

- Chechnya

- West Bengal

- Bali

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