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Comment by natrius | Hacker News Reader

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."

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

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?"

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...

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.

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