[cschmidt]

I hesitated in making a joke on HN, since that never works well here. I was actually making fun of the practice of having Indian call center employees go by ridiculous American sounding names that couldn't possibly be theirs.

I always have to chuckle when you get someone on the line, and they say "my name is 'Scott'", and you have to think, "No, its not." I thought that was what the parent meant by "Scott". As in, that's not his real name.

It was not an attack on anyone other than the people that run these call centers. Most of the comments thought I was picking on grammar or something, which wouldn't have been very funny.

Sorry for any misunderstanding or offense caused.

[j45]

I love jokes. My sense of humor is such, that it doesn't have to take shots at people for things they can do nothing about: the colour of their skin, their looks, their height, the name they're given, how they didn't choose the families they were born into.

Still, let's chill out. And process the half hearted apology of "sorry if anyone was offended, but not sorry I said it because I don't see the big deal".

I wasn't really that upset by you putting a reasonably accurate looking and long south indian name..

It did made me wonder if doing so was really that evolved from making up a willfully ignorant African or Asian inspired name 30-60 years ago. That, in turn, made me wonder if we're really progressing, and what made me write.

What's a joke to me, is how little empathy there is when someone is told to change their name to make it more acceptable and easier to pronounce because they're not worth knowing.

Maybe it'll start getting better when narrow minded thinking stops telling the world to be more open minded to tolerate their continued close-mindedness.