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Comment by kenrikm | Hacker News Reader

Sir Kindly deposit $5000 in our bank account and we will transfer a sum of $1000000.0000 from the fortune of the high prince of gerkiministanian. /NigerianScamJoke. In all seriousness this should go a long way as Africa is not limited by many of the strict regulations or entrenched cooperate interests that can limit tying new things. Mobile payments taking off there long before here in the US being a good example of this in action.

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These jokes aren't funny. They marginalize an entire nation of people. You should stop making them.

Nigerian scammers don't have much to do with Nigerians themselves, so the joke isn't making fun of Nigerians, but rather the perception of Nigerian entrepreneurship until now.

It doesn't matter. These jokes perpetuate a meme that makes Nigeria poorer. I hope you'll join me in avoiding that.

> These jokes perpetuate a meme that makes Nigeria poorer.

That's absurd. 419/Yahoo-Yahoo and corruption are a big problem there. That makes Nigeria poorer, not jokes.

s/nation/continent?

My intent was not to marginalize anyone, I actually think Africa has a lot of potential for awesomeness. Read my comment minus the joke.

My intent was not to marginalize anyone .... Read my comment minus the joke.

If that's true, how about you simply make your comment minus the joke?

Also worth noting that those scams mostly come from the United States now, not Nigeria.

http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/U-S-Internet-fraud-at-al...

"This should go a long way as Africa is not limited by many of the strict regulations or entrenched cooperate interests that can limit trying new things. Mobile payments taking off there long before here in the US being a good example of this in action."

That is definitely a better comment. But I'm not sure it's correct. Note that M-PESA, which I think is the leader here, originated from a do-gooder scheme, is controlled by an entrenched interest, and happened not because there were no regulations, but because the regulators were willing to try experiments:

http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2013/05/ec...

SJ issues aside, this is also a better comment because it doesn't start with something that makes me immediately think "This is of no value; How did it get past my spam filter?"

See how much better your comment is now? You should have just said this to begin with.

Oh come on. The classic Nigerian email scam was the first thing I thought of when I saw the headline. I half expected a parody but saw that it was Forbes.

People are too sensitive these days. Especially people who get self-righteously offended on behalf of someone else.

Relevant: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/01/chris-rock-colleges...

You're attempting to discredit my argument based on my ethnicity. You shouldn't do that.

I am Nigerian. Not that it matters.

If you are after fun, try reading this site: http://www.419eater.com/

"So what is scambaiting? Well, put simply, you enter into a dialogue with scammers, simply to waste their time and resources. Whilst you are doing this, you will be helping to keep the scammers away from real potential victims and screwing around with the minds of deserving thieves."

The morality of what is done might be questionable though, especially for 'highly successful' operations that leave the scammer in another country's desert without money. Most just end with a photo of the scammers doing things like wearing a fish on their head.

Reminds me of Dean Cameron's Nigerian Spam Scam Scam

http://www.spamscamscam.com

thanks for doing my job for me :)

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