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.
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.
Ok, Asian here and rice eater here also and I think the right way to respond to racist cliches is with hostility, same way we ought to respond to Nazism and other forms of fascism. if you want to reclaim the word, fine whatever. But you’re drawing a false equivalence between westerners trying to self-criticize their use of chauvinistic language, and the imperial governments that enforce that chauvinism in the first place (wtf?)
westerners trying to self-criticize their use of chauvinistic language
That’s the problem.
Westerner often force this rules towards everyone.
Like that one time someone got banned for using “nasi goreng” as their username with reasoning “it has similarity with Nazism” despite it’s on international group.
Or when Asian English group that usually co-exist within recognition of different culture suddenly has Westerner that policing everything about language. “Oh this is so offensive towards Asian”, while no one in group never know or even used the word in negative connotation.
While in reality because SEAsian are multi-language speaker, we just self moderate in case of potential language conflict, like budak in Malay is children, but in Indonesian means slave.
The thing is you aren’t the audience. Discussion about anti-Asian racism in English tends to be focused on the experiences of e.g. Asian-American people and on the racist abuse they get from white people.
It’s actually that exact kind of self-moderation, surely? “hang on, doesn’t this word suck, let’s not use it”?
Absolutely. Do not claim it’s racist when language made its meaning neutral.
Sorry friend, but reasoning with these people is always changing.
If you think it’s ok and you’re not from the affected demography, you can’t have a voice and “you’re probably white”.
If you think it’s ok and you’re actually from the affected demography, you’re just too dumb to understand your condition and have to let the white saviors and the “right” people from your demography explain to you why you should be angry and offended at everything.
Asian here and rice eater here.
Ah yes, you need all your ethos cred for this one. No pick-me behavior for the crackers here. Not like there are billions of others with the same description as you (including a bangladeshi immigrant like me). I didn’t bring my own race into this until the “Im asian and this is okay” posts happened.
It’s better to regain is neutral meaning instead of letting the racist weaponize neutral word.
Racists love “neutral words.” It’s called dog whistling. Racists get their plausible deniability while they get to signal and exchange with other racists on public forums like this one. It doesn’t matter if you didn’t intend for this to happen, it’s still facilitated here. There’s always the possibility of new words, or are you too personally attached to “rice” for that to happen?
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.
We are in a international, primarily english speaking lemmy instance by the developers of the project. Stop moving the goalposts here. We are not in your rhetorical places in “Asia” where there’s no negative connotation. Of course it will seem “western centric.”
For your last edit, fuck right off. People can see through your crocodile tears and self tokenization. This type of shit only works with white people who will accept your opinions more than others because it means they get to keep their status quo. Nice bringing up imperialism, you’d be great as a lapdog.
Unfortunately not surprised to see some unironic /r/asablackman going on here.
Removed by mod
Thank you for making this post. The number of times I’ve seen the term used here lately has been bothering me.
Everything bothers you
This bothers me
ITT:
The "pick-me"s are almost as bad
lmao like moths to a flame
@dessalines@lemmy.ml there’s a lot of cryptofash in here begging the question that need to be banned, not merely have their comments removed
Small question for you, is Dessalines still expected to moderate this community? I assumed they would have bigger fish to fry
Further down the thread they were calling for mods. I’m calling for admin action.
I see, Dessalines is both, that’s why I was confused
You are also begging to be banned. Your comment calling someone a “comprador” is to be removed too.
someone
also strong gusano is a slur energy
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.
This is an example of the American cultural imperialism someone else was whining about above. In the UK a f@ggot is a type of food. There are adverts on the telly for it. A fag is a cigarette. Gypsy is not necessarily perjorative (it appears as a category on the census). Not sure what tr*p is, but if it’s tramp, that’s a homeless person. Also, a fanny is ladybits.
tr*p
This is generally a censor of the word “trap”. While it obviously has several non-slur meanings, it is also used as an extremely visceral anti-trans (and in particular, anti-transfem) slur :/
The implication is that transfem people are “secretly gay men trapping straight men into being attracted to them”. It is associated with simultaneous sexualisation, homophobia, and transphobia >.<. If someone called me that IRL I would be seriously worried for my safety, as that’s often the kind of thing people would say before either raping or killing or injuring a transfem person for “”“threatening”“” their fragile sexuality, then using the trans panic defense.
The term got it’s start on 4chan, and people used it for femboy characters in anime (who are often poorly translated and may actually be trans in a lot of cases), but the kind of dehumanisation aspect of it means it very very quickly became a viscious anti-trans slur :/
Ah, thanks.
Is f____t not used as a
pejorativeslur for gay men in the UK?I must revise my earlier reply. Watching a documentary about George Michael, it seems it was a current and offensive slur in the UK even decades ago. Apparently my childhood was sheltered from homophobia.
I’ve not heard it used so, but I imagine younger folk might use it that way, since we adopt US culture so much.
new world vocabulary.
lmao
Not sure I understand the joke?
Not saying that this is a bad thing, but it’s kind of amazing how opinions of the public can shift so drastically within a month: https://lemmy.ml/post/2080934. Last month another user posted in the very same !unixporn@lemmy.ml asking whether people consider the term “rice” racist. The majority opinion back then was “if you get offended over a term like this you should take a break from the Internet.”
Lol, it’s a pretty good example of how hexbear federating with the rest of lemmy has functioned to push back on a lot of the casual bigotry that got imported from Reddit
This term has been around a lot longer than reddit
applied to Unix desktop customization it was popularized on reddit
but yeah that’s the whole point, before that it was an obviously racist term
I thought i remembered a long time ago (early 2000s) that it was actually about using rice based ethanol in your sportscar to boost performance somehow.
at that same time & earlier it was predominantly used to refer to either car enthusiasts themselves or their asian-manufactured, cheap and easy to customize cars. as has been endlessly pointed out in this thread.
It’s because the ratio of liberals to communists/ actual leftists who give a shit about not being racist has changed quite a bit since then
It is interesting that many of those people are conservative bigoted fascists, not because of the words used but how.
It is the language of hate that drives the mindset of gestapo and goosestep:
- your new opinion does not matter if it doesn’t match my old one (conservative)
- if you are different you are the presumed enemy (bigotry)
- an overwhelming desire to integrate personal ideology with state control (mussolini era fascism)
That’s still the prevailing opinion in this thread lol.
This is the same shit as with r/animemes and the word trap back on reddit.
As an east Asian that eats rice every day, I must say that I don’t consider this term racist at all. The meanings of words shift over time. For example, nice used to mean “foolish, ignorant, frivolous, senseless,” but now it means “kind, thoughtful.” Gay used to mean “lighthearted, joyous,” then a slang for homosexuals, and ultimately became the term with which many homosexuals choose to describe themselves. Rice may have been a racist term, but now what it means is “to extensively customize one’s desktop system to one’s liking, especially Linux systems.” It no longer is racist.
As an Asian American, I assure you this is offensive to me. This is not a word that has shifted in the common vernacular here to mean anything that doesn’t still have a strong base in its racist roots. For example, ricing your car still has derogatory undertones.
I respect your freedom to choose which terms to consider offensive, and I do not plan to talk you into accepting terms offensive to you. Nevertheless, I want to say that while “ricing your car” does have derogatory undertones, “ricing my Linux system” just does not have the same undertone. Ricing cars, as in the racist context, means customizing cars so heavily that it becomes an abomination. Ricing a Linux system, on the other hand, is the act of making a Linux desktop system as aesthetically pleasing as possible.
I disagree.
Ricers, in the 80s, as a term that referred to Japanese cars (Honda, Toyota) who burned rice instead of gas. This is bad. Full stop.
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.
Now we are in 20s, and rice refers to customizations that represent one’s personal choices regarding cosmetic enhancements.
Is that a bad thing?
Why should a word be locked in on a definition from 40 yrs ago? Why should it be stuck in the past?
Why not reclaim a word? Customizing a desktop is a labor of love. It takes a decent amount of time, and is deeply personal, representing one’s own taste.
- it started as something racist
- but then—
We can stop right there
You want to be close minded? That’s on you.
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?
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.
so you have no opinion and you decided to get mad at the person cussing out the racist guy?
Why don’t you watch YOUR behavior
You just called her a dipshit, why are you resorting to personal attacks?
😠
Why not reclaim a word? Customizing a desktop is a labor of love. It takes a decent amount of time, and is deeply personal, representing one’s own taste.
Or why not find our own words? Words aren’t “locked” in on a single definition, but rather carry their whole host of definitions and history with them. You have to judge diction on all its fronts. Reclaiming a word means being part of the group that the term has actively disparaged (ex: reclaiming words like “queer”) . Using “rice” is not an act of reclaiming in this context and we shouldn’t view it that way.
That is actual bs. Rice doesn’t bother me - I don’t read rice with a racial connection, at all. Just doesn’t exist for me. It is food and something that’s been customized.
I say fuck it. Shatter the limitations of fraudulent history; don’t just go punk, go full cyberpunk.
The major culture is hung up in non issues; and why not? So go counter to the culture:
rice your desktop.
You do you however. I am not here to say how you should think and do.
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?
I don’t think it matters.
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?
I see a lot of assumptions that rice, not a racist term, is a racist term. shrug
You go to the grocery store, grain aisle, and there is a bag of rice. What pops into your head?
Me, a tasty grain that complements many meals.
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.
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?
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.
are you white by any chance
You’re not disregarding someone opinion based on race per chance.
white isn’t a race
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How the fresh fuck is this even a thing still? Even back in the 90’s I heard dudes making gags about “Uncle Ben Hot Rods”. You know. RICE IT UP!
GET IT? They’re shitty race cars made by a shitty race who only makes cheap stuff!
🤮
Yeah I’m actually amazed people are still using this term. Figures it’s about computers though lol, of course the antisocial nerds are stronger holdouts than car enthusiasts.
put japanese parts on a hot rod?
Discussions like this always bring me back to one thing…can a word itself be racist? Is it racist to use a word if it’s not being said with racist intent? It’s reminiscent of the gimp debacle…if a words use isn’t intended to offend it’s honestly beyond me how anyone could find it offensive. Are we supposed to ban every single word that has the slightest history of being used in an offensive fashion? Feel like we’d have a really long list if we did that.
Yeah, I had absolutely no idea what “ricing” was even supposed to mean, like it doesn’t look like it’s short for anything, doesn’t seem like an acronym for anything, it’s not analogous or synonymous with anything, I can’t see how “rice” is supposed to be metaphorical at all to cool looking linux desktops, and it’s not an entirely new word like “rizz” or “yeet”
So by all accounts it’s an absolutely unfitting word for what it’s describing
Knowing the racist history of the term now, yeah that makes sense and yeah I vote we move to an objectively better term
Idk what tho, maybe “decore” cuz it actually describes that the focus is the look, that the DE is the Core of the setup, and sounds cooler than “rice”
“Decore” and “Decorizing” is probably the terms I’m personally gonna use atleast
Edit: unless I find a better term, I came up with this one on the stop
The term rice comes from Japanese culture of modding cars aesthetically. Basically getting a basic normal car and making it look cool.
And if we go even further back, not many people know this but rice is actually food.
I wasn’t aware of this, thank you for posting
