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.
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”?
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 :/
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.
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.
ITT:
The "pick-me"s are almost as bad
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.
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?
Hi Linguist, which side of the linguist camp you are?; the one that thinks the meaning of the language is fix and people should be following it or the one that let people decides how the language works and let it change overtime?
There aren’t really two sides of the linguist camp. That language changes naturally over time is well documented.
And new coinages are part of that process. ;)
Yes please, I agree.
I wasn’t aware of this, thank you for posting
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
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.
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
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?
are you white by any chance
You’re not disregarding someone opinion based on race per chance.
white isn’t a race
Im asian. I eat and like rice, even on my setups. I’m gonna keep using rice cause its not my fault yall western imperialists fuck shit up and dont wanna be reminded of it. also very western centric debate. Good job debate perverts.
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 (what the fuck dude)
Funny you’re calling anyone a debate pervert
That’s a good point. What do you use instead?
“Polished,” “tweaked,” or if we want to reclaim a term from the crafters, “bedazzled.”
Probably mayo or some shit like that.
okay
oh look, it’s a whiny little cracker! that puts your racism elsewhere in the thread in context
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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