Meta post I’ve decided to make. I enjoyed the unixporn subreddit a lot when I used reddit more. I enjoy customizing my linux de as much as the next nerd.
But you definitely shouldn’t use racist slang to refer to the process.
To be clear, I didn’t know the origin of the term ‘ricing’ until fairly recently. I was chattimg with my friend and used it to describe my de setup. They informed me that apparently it’s from car customization, and is a pejorative against generally asian men who customize their car to look like a racecar.
After learning this I was sad to realize just how engrained it is in linux de customization culture. I personally have stopped using the term, and I would ask everyone here stop as well.
It’s a stupid term that is based on an antiquated mindset where Asian people are not creative and cannot invent anything of substance; we are only able to poorly imitate what the West develops. It needs to die.
Also, I’ve been using and customizing the X Window-based desktop for 25 years and I’m not sure that the term “ricing” was ever used anywhere before Reddit and even then only within the past decade or so. Let it die with that culture.
I’m with you especially on that last part. My most insane privately racist lug-mate called it modding or customization. Even in the windows shell hacking scene no one described it like that.
I do like using “tuning” though, fond memories of import tuner magazine and my dearly departed first car and first computer.
If you cant put a set of rays on your pc can you even call it done? 😤
Now they need to just find an Asian person saying it’s not a big deal so they can dismiss your comment.
It’s a stupid term that is based on an antiquated mindset where Asian people are not creative and cannot invent anything of substance; we are only able to poorly imitate what the West develops. It needs to die.
The term at least since the 90s means to modify stuff to your heart’s content and literally creating something new, unique and personal.
Idk where you went to get that “can’t invent anything of substance” thing, but you might want to check your internalized racism.
Thank you for making this post. The number of times I’ve seen the term used here lately has been bothering me.
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This bothers me
Oh, bother…
The arguments being made here are the same ones that were used for f*ggot, tr*p, nword, g*psy, r*dskins, etc etc etc.
It’s the same damn thing every single time, a bunch of reactionaries will piss and whine and piss and whine and piss and whine because they have to make the most minimal amount of effort to adopt a new word in their vocabulary instead of the problem one. They will piss and whine forever until eventually accepting it, like all the others historically.
They join a long long line of pissy whiney losers for making the same tired old arguments we’ve seen for so many things before.
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I have no idea what “rice” is supposed to evoke outside of its history in the car industry/communities.
Whoops, your virtue signal is showing.
Don’t go deleting it now.
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Lmao, it’s cute one of your comrades remove the image on your instance.
I didn’t say people can’t change. But 8 days ago you used the term “outside of its history in the car industry/communities” and now you claim you have no idea what it’s supposed to be? Give me a break lol. Are you outing yourself as a racist from 8 days ago? Wow quick reform.
This post doesn’t change anything. It’s just a bunch of hexbear snowflakes whining that a community has enough brain cells to know context matters.
How exactly is your use of a term you deemed racist not relevant in a post where you and your comrades are going around calling people racist for using a term they don’t deem racist? Are you actually serious right now? You can’t see the relevance? Take your blinders off.
At any rate, I didn’t dig up the comment on purpose. I was seeing how much hexbear engages with lemmy.ml/c/unixporn and wouldn’t you know it out of the 210 comments your instance had only 5 of them were not in this post. Not surprising since you only had 22 users subscribed here. Your comment was one of the 5 and I went to see if there was any consistency, expecting to see hexbear users call it out as racist if it came up as you all clearly think it is now. To my lack of surprise I saw the opposite, 80% not having anything to do with the term and your humdinger exposing yourself.
You’ve underminded your entire argument and exposed your bad faith tactics in one fell swoop. You should probably stay in your safe space instead of trying to find things you think are you dunking on people.
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You’re delusional. My only exposure to hexbear prior to this post was communities on large instances wanting to defederate you. This whole post makes it abundantly clear why that’s the case. You’re all very clearly a group of losers that banded together for some type of us vs the world bullshit, you even tried to pass off hexbears vs the world as my idea when it’s actually yours. It’s pathetic.
You can’t engage with us on the and now you’re resorting to meaningless personal jabs
On the what now? Do you just rage type and submit without making sure your words form coherent thoughts? Try again junior. It’s not a personal jab to point out you outed yourself as a racist by your own definition. Almost every comment you lot have made to me has been dodging my original point that there are a lot of you piling on and then attacking me. I guess hypocrisy is lost in your small world eh?
As an aside, do hexbears have an infantilzation fetish? The amount of your users randomly bringing in baby shit is really odd. Oh, what’s that? You all lean on tactic that was pivotal to maintaining slavery? But go ahead and tell me again how you’re not racist anymore. In case a hexbear mod removes the link, I linked to the wikipedia page on infantilization.
To get this straightened up, you’ve outed yourself as a racist both by using a term you now claim is racist that you had no idea how it would be used outside of a racist context and your whole lot use the same tactics with people you disagree with that were used to prolong slavery. Got it.
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I accept your surrender. Better luck with the virtue signaling next time. Try to stop being racist 👍
UH OHHHHH, better hand in your hexbear membership, you don’t fit in, you dirty racist
Ouch
Yeah, “cooking” is superior
100% agree!!
I’ve never used the term and the first time I’ve heard about it even without knowing the origins/meaning it already was clear to be a pejorative term.
The excuse the mods in the old r/unixporn subreddit was that the term was broadly accepted by the community.
Well guess what we are not reddit and one of the reasons I left reddit was because I was tired of being in communities like that. We can do better, let’s shape our communities with the right values and not just carry on a legacy that should’ve died with reddit itself.
Asian here and rice eater here.
Language doesn’t work in absolute way, it could change its meaning all the time.
It’s better to regain is neutral meaning instead of letting the racist weaponize neutral word.
Also, this mindset is also Western centric, go to Asia and people in Linux and car community simply use the word without any negative connotation.
Edit: By doing this, you’re no different from imperial government who tries to make one standard of morality, which in fact further hurts Asian living in Asia. And as Indonesian, I’m hurt with your statement. Let me regain the neutral meaning. Don’t speak for us.
Yes please, I agree.
ITT:
I wasn’t aware of this, thank you for posting
Sry I’ve been an absent mod here. Would anyone like to help mod this community?
I’ve also added a no-racist terms rule to the sidebar.
Linguist here. Totally agree the term should stop being used. As a practical concern, it would be easier to get people to stop using it if there were another term that was a drop-in replacement.
Yeah, we can say “customize” as the verb, but what about the noun? Sharing “customizations” doesn’t really refer to the same kind of DE-specific customization as the other term.
Is there any such word in usage? If not, can we coin one and just start dropping it on forums?
TIL thanks for the heads up o7
I got called out for saying this once. At first I was like “what’s racist about rice” but when I googled it everything that came up was an explicitly anti-asian meme.
So yeah the word is being used in the west as a racist term so non Asians should reconsider whether using the term helps or hurts their relationships with others within the communities we frequent. I think vigilance is better than ambivalence.
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are you white by any chance
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You’re not disregarding someone opinion based on race per chance.
white isn’t a race
It’s also something somebody can’t control. So it’s still shitty to ask them that.
It’s really not shitty to ask if they have the background to understand what racism is to people who experience it. I grew up blessed with a good community, and experiencing racism for the first time when I moved away is still one of the most painful things I’ve ever felt.
- it started as something racist
- but then—
We can stop right there
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I dont see how you can defend this. You acknowledge it’s based on a racist term. There’s no reclamation going on, you just lifted context and addressed none of the problems. And no part of you is saying “we could probably use another work here” in all of this?
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They were not called that “for a brief moment” it’s been used to put down import tuner cars for decades by people who’d rather drive mustangs and camaros. It was meant to put down:
- small displacement import cars
- tuned import cars
- (and this one i remember cause it wasnt that long ago) cars with cheap or considered tacky modifications that often only alluded to performance modification.
It’s so obviously loaded with racist connotation that I dont know why you’d want to defend it so badly.
Also it’s not two manufacturers. Honda, Toyota, Nissan, Mistubishi were all putting out sporty cars that were getting performance numbers rivaling v8 block american cars at the time
It was not a brief moment, it’s still used that way to this day in modern car culture.
I disagree. People who weren’t there when the term was racist are only aware of it being racist because it was revealed to be a old racist term.
It was racist WITHIN MY OWN LIFETIME unless you fell out the applecart yesterday that still applies to you.
I am constantly amazed at how many people online seem to have fallen off of the turnip truck yesterday.
That’s an incredibly narrow minded view.
Are you fucking stupid, you think Japanese cars used to run on rice?
😠
No one thinks any cars actually burned rice to run, they were saying that’s how the term originated (from a racist joke). But let’s just jump straight to cussing people out and personal attacks.
Oh no, I jumped straight to cussing people out and conducting personal attacks against somebody trying to argue for continual use of a racist term
You’re plainly in the wrong here in terms of behaviour. But I also know there’s no getting through to you based on your behaviour.
You’re a tone policing dweeb arguing in support of being racist. If you need more context for the history of the term, please read further here
I have said nothing on my opinions on this issue other than to call you out for being a dipshit. Keep assuming. It seems to be all I’ve witnessed except from a very small majority from your instance.
Why don’t you watch YOUR behavior
You just called her a dipshit, why are you resorting to personal attacks?
so you have no opinion and you decided to get mad at the person cussing out the racist guy?
😤
Not OP but, You’re missing the point. This fact about the word rice is new to a lot of folks here, including me. You’re hellbent on proving that everybody is in on some racist circle that’s perpetuating the use of this word.
If a word changes it’s general meaning in normal day use… from something so bad to something that’s no longer associated with said bad thing… is it really bad? What about gay then? That term has be co-opted by homosexual men. Do you suggest we stop using the word gay? Then I would call you a reactionary.
This fact about the word rice is new to a lot of folks here, including me.
This is why we’re in this thread trying to educate you, my child.
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It’s a term used to racially exclude people by calling Asian car enthusiasts tacky posers. Is that really the energy we want to bring (or rather keep) to the Linux community?
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Can you be sure of that? And if it did matter to the public image of the Linux community, would agree to stop using that term, or is using a word that to this day has racist connotations more important to you than ensuring that all members of the Linux community feel welcome?
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Ricing is a racist term. I am telling you right now that it is a racist term referring to a type of car modding that Asians are stereotyped as doing. It is explicitly used to deride and exclude Asians from the car enthusiast community. Anyone who’s into cars or around people who are has heard this term, but you can Google it if you want.
What does it say about you that you’ll deny basic, well known facts to defend using such an exclusionary term in a tiny community with a large amount of Asians in it?
As someone that was very into cars (still kind of am but not nearly so much) and tuner culture. Yes, “rice” in the context of customizing a machine to your specific performance needs has always had racist baggage and likely always will. This is a weird hill to die on bud, and it makes you look very sus.
Would you agree that a word that was so racist is now being demolished of it’s original bad meaning and something inclusive is being built in it’s place is a good thing?
A sort of reformation or curing? After all, racist words were not racist until racists started using those words to be racist.
I’m seeing a bunch of tacked on cosmetic bits made to give the look of performance to computers. According to another post, that one-for-one matches my last known definition to the term.
Also nonracists using a racist term doesnt make the term stop being racist. Curing doesnt start by not meaning it when you keep using the racist term. You dont bandage a stab wound by continually stabbing the victim.
Also nonracists using a racist term doesnt make the term stop being racist.
It does though. Gay was used to mean happy. Now it means homosexuals. Inbetween, it used to be a slang… now it no longer is. There’s nothing in humanity as fluid as language.
Curing doesnt start by not meaning it when you keep using the racist term. You dont bandage a stab wound by continually stabbing the victim.
Teaching people who are not aware that it’s racist IS stabbing a wound that was healing (by other people who were making it mean something cool and inclusive).
gay was reclaimed by gay people. do you see the difference?
No. This framing is incredibly foolish. If a term is hurtful to a group of people, you stop using it in favor of other words, otherwise you demonstrate you dont care that it is hurtful to a group of people, hence “continually stabbing the victim”
I’m curious if we have a detailed historic analysis of the origin of the term.
I always figured it came form the “rice burner” mocking for Japanese motorbikes and cars. I figured this was mostly a pick about their relatively low performance. Aside from the “Asians eat rice” source material, is that intended as an insult to Asians in general, or more directed to the design committees at Toyota and Honda-- that they couldn’t design a car capable of burning petrol?
To try a parallel concept: If an x86-64 enthusiast made fun of an ARM chip by saying it was “manufactured on a crumpet substrate” would that be an insult against the British, or more using that it comes from a British firm to provide vocabulary for a product-related insult?
OTOH, I never really saw the term widely used to describe a desktop configuration before here, and it feels weird because of that more than anything else. I’m trying to remember if it was seen in the “PC Case Mod” community circa 2000, because they actually used a fair number of techniques and ideas from the car tuning scene that also used the “ricing” term (lots of cold-cathode lighting and weird 12v accessories)
I’m curious if we have a detailed historic analysis of the origin of the term.
If you want to do the research be my guest, but I’m telling you right now, I’ve only ever heard the term used to mock an Asian person’s car mods.
If an x86-64 enthusiast made fun of an ARM chip by saying it was “manufactured on a crumpet substrate” would that be an insult against the British
made fun
There’s you answer. It is disrespect based on ethnicity.
I never really saw the term widely used to describe a desktop configuration before here
Then you should be fine with not using the term, right? Why are you working so hard to defend a word you claim you don’t see much? You have put all this effort into justifying using a word you have been told several times is racist that apparently other people don’t use according to you.
If a word changes it’s general meaning in normal day use… from something so bad to something that’s no longer associated with said bad thing… is it really bad? What about gay then? That term has be co-opted by homosexual men. Do you suggest we stop using the word gay?
Why don’t you like that words are being declawed from their original poisonous nature?
From there, rice, in the 90s-00s, referred to the Race Inspired Cosmetic Enhancement: typically bolted onto Honda and Toyota, it moved from that to any cosmetic car customization 10s.
[Citation Needed]
Any acronym other than the name of an organization can be presumed a retronym until proven otherwise
In general I don’t agree with the sort of broad language policing some people seem to be advocating for here, but this word does seem pretty inseparable from a racist joke. What could rice have to do with computer customization? Even if it’s distanced from the original meaning the word itself implies that racist joke. So yeah probably better avoided and replaced.
