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.

  • nasi_goreng@lemmy.zip
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    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.

    • panopticon [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      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?)

      • nasi_goreng@lemmy.zip
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        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.

        • Vashti@feddit.uk
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          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”?

  • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    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.

    • supert@lemmy.sdfeu.org
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      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.

        • supert@lemmy.sdfeu.org
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          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.

  • unix_joe@lemmy.sdf.org
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    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.

    • xXthrowawayXx [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      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.

  • Scoopta@programming.dev
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    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.

  • circuitfarmer@lemmy.sdf.org
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    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?

    • harry@lemmy.ml
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      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?

      • circuitfarmer@lemmy.sdf.org
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        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. ;)

      • midnight@lemmy.one
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        Instance has comparatively high and active userbase with a very high percentage of Linux users

        That may be true, but your instance doesn’t have a very high percentage of engagement in this community outside of this post. Copying from an older comment of mine:

        These are the top 3 instances commenting in this specific post at the time of writing (2023-08-25 08:02 UTC):

        instance   | count
        -------------+-------
        hexbear.net |   205
        lemmy.ml    |   106
        lemm.ee     |    61
        

        These are the top 3 instances and their comment counts on any post in lemmy.ml/c/unixporn this month at the time of writing:

        domain    | count
        -------------+-------
        lemmy.ml    |   210
        hexbear.net |   210
        lemm.ee     |   100
        

        You’re reading that right, hexbear has a whopping FIVE comments in this community that are not part of this post.

        One of those 5 is a user participating in the hexbear brigade in this thread that commented previously said rices were inspiring. But go ahead and tell me all those users are pillars of the linux community. Which bad faith argument will you use next?

        Inb4 bRIgaDIng HAs To be ORGaniZed And we’re NoT; even though an acceptable use of the term is also when a particular group floods another community’s space that they don’t normally participate in. I know you lot have trouble grasping a term can have multiple definitions, so don’t hurt yourself champ.

        • Freeanotherday [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net
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          This is a .ml post… by one of us…

          Who the fuck do you think you are saying we are not part of the .ml community?

          We were here before you and we will be here after you’re purged with the rest of the libs.

          inshallah

          • midnight@lemmy.one
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            What? You know hexbear isn’t lemmy.ml… right?? Your instance has 22 users subscribed to lemmy.ml/c/unixporn. You’ll notice I didn’t say you’re not part of whatever .ml community you’re talking about (although hilarious if you’re actually Mali gov.) I’m saying your instance is not an active participant in this unixporn community outside of this post. Also probably pretty safe to bet you’re not actually part of whatever ml community you’re imagining.

            Another not so clever shift by you fools to unsuccessfully change what I’ve said.

            We were here before you and we will be here after you’re purged with the rest of the libs.

            Are you the reason your comrades keep questioning knowledge on federation? Your instance didn’t federate until earlier this month. It’s literally impossible for your collective “we” to have been here before anyone with an account older than that, of which there are plenty.

            To spell it out for you. You don’t know what you’re talking about. Your instance as a whole does not engage with lemmy.ml/c/unixporn outside of this post. Be more mad though, it’s fun dismantling you all one by one. Maybe just stick to your safe space echo chamber 👍

        • Shinji_Ikari [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          That’s great and all, but this is a federated comm, it appeared on my home page under active. I don’t know if it matters if I personally shared my XMonad config and custom volume widget or commented on yet another custom tiling wm. I always exclusively lurked on the subreddit. I lurk on this one too. Discussion isn’t usually that insightful besides “wow!” and “theme?”.

          This time, there was actual discussion and I decided to join in. Much more interesting than the 900th i3 gaps with an 18 pixel gap and 15 lines of code visible in the terminal.

    • s0ykaf [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      thread appears on our feeds. we comment on it.

      i understand it feels bad to have your beliefs questioned, but that’s not brigading, it’s simply how these websites work

    • randint@lemm.ee
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      400 comments total is rookie numbers. You should check out the news posts involving either Russia, China, or Taiwan. Or check out this post where the admins of lemm.ee asked for the users’ opinions of whether to defederate from hexbear.net. There are 1884 comments. (There was once more than 1900 comments, but I guess the mods removed some.)

  • RT Redréovič@feddit.ch
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    Thanks for the heads up. I tried looking up the origins of the term once long back when I first heard it but could never find it after a search. This again makes me iterate how Racist and White-centric the Internet is in general, which is observable to me as a person from Assam.

    Another term people should avoid is the «soyboy» meme term. It is also a racially prejudiced word against Asians.

    • https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/soy_boy, Soy consumption is high in many Asian countries. (There is no scientific evidence for any correlation between soy consumtion and feminization for anyone curious to know.)
  • tun@lemm.ee
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    TIL the origin of the word.

    But I am confused. Anyone offended for using the word?

    When repos changed to main from master, I got problems.

    People are hypersensitive over these words now.

    • Solemn@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      I’m Asian American. I’m offended by this word. In my experience, it has always been a racist perjorative every time it’s been used.

      Like you mentioned in your other comment, you don’t have the American racial experiences with how this is used to understand why this hurts me, so I’d like to clarify that it does.

      • temptest [any]@hexbear.net
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        One of the top-rated replies so far is an Asian who expresses they are offended, so that can’t be right.

        What power and control does this even give someone?

  • inasaba@lemmy.ml
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    Thank you for making this post. The number of times I’ve seen the term used here lately has been bothering me.

  • Throwaway@lemm.ee
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    Nah, I like the term.

    It refers to early 00s car culture, a race car had all go no show, a ricer had all show no go. It’s just the next iteration of the term. And it’s pejorative to anyone who does that shit, not asian men. I have no idea where y’all got that idea from.