I beg to differ. What is considered as normal in some cultures, can be considered offensive in other cultures. It's not because those people lack empathy.

What matters is who is doing the considering. Each friendship between people is its own "culture" in that sense; I don't generally do things that my friend would consider offensive, if they are actually my friend.

It's nothing to do with the wider culture or ethnic environment, or what third parties may or may not be offended by: I don't do things that I know would hurt my friends.

We could go into a whole debate about this. From my perspective, I don't think they're wrong, at the end of the day, I'm a foreigner in their country, and it's up to me to adjust my mindset. I don't think it's up to them to change their behavior because I find something offensive, that to them is not considered offensive.

You're describing a very superficial form of friendship. A true friend holds you accountable and tells you what you need to hear, even when it offends you.

> I don't generally do things that my friend would consider offensive, if they are actually my friend.

> I don't do things that I know would hurt my friends.

These two statements seem like they could be in conflict with each other. Suppose your friend has a methamphetamine addiction, but they consider it offensive for you to bring it up. Do you not bring it up ever because it's offensive to them?

No, of course not. Inaction/silence doesn't harm someone.

Furthermore, what someone who isn't me puts in their own body is none of my business.

An interesting thing I experience in making friends later in life is mapping expectations about 'what friends do' (I guess I pester and expect to be pestered about a lot of personal things, the closer the friendship the more personal the teasing should be) to expectation 'new' friends have about the relationship.

I thought about your human empathy v culture remark. It is true, empathy is a human trait, however, each culture and society have unique mores of their own. These idiosyncrasies will miss, or emphasize, various aspects of personality en masse, to some extent; evidently, there are different cultures. So maybe in this case, those belly pokers have been indoctrinated to be less empathetic towards what they see as overweight.

Even so, that's contextual. What may be thought of as hurtful in one culture could be considered merely honest in another. Ignoring the things could get lost in cultural translation is an unfortunate way to miss the forest for the trees.