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.
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.
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.
😠
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
are you white by any chance
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.
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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?
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.
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.
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.
yes, using bigoted terminology throughout tech is a great example of the cyberpunk DYSTOPIA that fiction warned us about.
meanwhile, in the political side of punk, we’re antiracist and finding new words is the least we can do
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?
- 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?
Defend what?
How is rice racist? Japanese cars were called ricers for a brief moment 40 yrs ago. It is derogatory towards two Japanese corporations.
Where are people entering the equation?
Are you sure you don’t have a you problem?
Note - people can call their setups as they please. This is unixporn. Call it my desktop $ shot for all I care. I am not into rules in this case; my convictions end with me, as that is our shared limit.
It was not a brief moment, it’s still used that way to this day in modern car culture.
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
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.
The hexbear squad is really brigading the fuck out of this thread.
What if it wasn’t racist?
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Asian American here. It’s racist. It offends me because it is racist, and has always been racist.
It must be exhausting being offended by food
lol
That’s not a response at all, try harder next time.
Neither is your reply. When I saw your comment, it immediately occurred to me that you must be from hexbear.net. (My client hides the @instance.org part in usernames.) There was something inherently characteristic of hexbears in your comment. I clicked on your name to check, and voila - of course you were. Your comment is extremely condescending. This is how dreaded the userbase of hexbear.net is. I bet that at least 25 of your 30 upvotes are from other hexbears who upvotes anything from hexbears. I wonder why so many instances have decided to defederate from you.
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Then it would be fine. But it is literally a derogatory term, so it’s not fine.
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I’m going to continue using it.
bravely being a racist in line with social norms, our hero!
Sure, and I will lose no sleep.
Way to engage with the subject matter, no justification at all, nothing. You’re part of the problem you do know that?
Way to ad hominem. You’re part of the problem of people not taking actual hateful language seriously. Most people do not want to be offensive, but being told every single day that something they said offends n=1 group of people will cause them to begin to tune it all out.
Ah yes, the good old “We have so many problems that its better to just ignore them than try to fix even one thing.” There is so much hateful language because even if you use a cartoonishly naive take that racism ended with the civil rights act, that is still almost 200 years of racism shaping the way we talk about things. It takes some time to undo 200 years of racists inventing terms and trying to pass them off with winks and nods. It will take a whole lot longer if we’re so lazy as to not even make the attempt.
My justification is most people don’t care. You would be hard pressed to find an Asian person offended by this.
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Hi. Asian American here. I’m offended by this. Please stop deliberately choosing to use terms that are hurtful to me.
I dont think you understood my comment.
no cracker, you just don’t want to change so you pretend you not being offended means no one is
What is it with Commies and not being able to read? Nowhere did I say no one is offended by this. I said most people aren’t. I don’t care if a small amount of people are upset by it. It not realistic to change language on a large scale everytime a tiny tiny percentage of people get upset.
funniest thing i’ve heard today is implying commies don’t read ENOUGH
The “most people don’t care” and the “find me an Asian person offended by this” are both non-talking points.
- You are in a thread about this exact issue, it seems that there are people who care, and you have to engage with that.
- So? Does that mean we should stop discussing this? How are we hard-pressed when this thread exists?
I didnt say “find me an Asian person offended by this”. I also didnt say you should stop discussing it.
You also didn’t say anything of note besides pulling your justification out of your ass. I have nothing to really discuss because you didn’t give anything worth talking about.
My justification is most people don’t care. You would be hard pressed to find an Asian person offended by this.
Source: trust me bro.
The thread question is “we should stop using this term” my reply was no. My justification is that most people don’t care. The term has been around modding communities for decades and used by people of all races. If it bothers you so much start using something else and then you can see how many people care enough to change.
people like you are why shit like this is impossible to change. thank you for doing your part to keep the world just that little bit more racist, shitbag
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 might 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 don’t understand where the problem arises exactly, there is no racist intent in its usage here, it’s just a word, it’s an empty container and we fill it with meaning. In this context it just means “customization”, sure it’s not a completely made up term and its origin is lowkey racist, but, as you stated yourself, not many know at all of that connotation, they go on to use it despite never meaning to use bad language on purpose, because it has simply acquired a different meaning, it was just the lingo they happened to find in the community.
There’s plenty of words that had historically been bad and then became good, same the other way around. I believe that’s the case here as well.Even so, if an alternative word is proposed and favored, even just plain “customization” (which I feel would be better than replacing it with a lingo word, as it would make it easier for newcomers to understand what is being talked about more easily), I wouldn’t be opposed, the main thing is to be able to convey the meaning, that’s what that matters most in the end
Asian American. As you mentioned, the roots of this weird are racist, and I’d argue that it was not “lowkey” either. If you said this around me in real life, I’d probably give you a funny look and assume you’re ignorant. But that doesn’t mean I’m not offended. Racism has caused honest trauma to me, and despite your innocent intentions, you are causing me pain.
I respect that, I honestly might not be very informed on the thing, so if it does still hurt then, by all means, let’s get rid of it
I wasn’t aware of this, thank you for posting
TIL thanks for the heads up o7
it’s not going to stop unless you have a good replacement
The term is a Reddit-ism that should die with Reddit.
- xwinman, which dates to the last millennium, uses the terms “styles” and “setups”
- boxshots.org is a site from around the turn of the century when *box style window managers were all the rage, uses the term “shots” as short for screenshots
- linuxquestions.org and daemonforums.org use the terms, “mods,” “styles,” “themes,” “customizations,” and “setups”
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/vbsHox73mRo?si=rJvv9HtdhHlE2p85&
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
No.
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.
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…
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I’m pretty sure it is actually from a certain food (can’t remember which one) that only tastes good when lathered in rice
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By this logic, saying words like “shit” are swear words is colonialist
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