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.
No.
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.
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. ;)
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.
The hexbear squad is really brigading the fuck out of this thread.
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.)
China, or Taiwan
This is not a word made to be racist, but stolen to be one in the eyes of a few.
The mare fact that you stop using the term rice, because “it’s racist” implies that you’re being one, by saying the racists are right about using the term in a racial and derogatory way. Instead of using the word normally, as has always been here.
If tomorrow greetings becomes racist, because it’s discovered that in their origins were racists the ones who greeted themselves, will you stop greeting people?
Im pretty tired of seeing this stupid propaganda spread everywere and everyone celebrating it.
You will never be morally superior. You really are not helping any one, you have no altruist intentions, you have no repercussion on reality. You are an attention seeker twisted by social media and social engineering into a mockery of a sane person’s mind.
Thank you for making this post. The number of times I’ve seen the term used here lately has been bothering me.
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.
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.
What could rice have to do with computer customization?
Nothing, its a completely different meaning of the word rice.
Even if it’s distanced from the original meaning the word itself implies that racist joke.
Me and everyone I know didn’t know the history of the word at all until now. We didn’t think it implied anything, we just assumed it was another stupid nonsensical English word.
Nothing, its a completely different meaning of the word rice.
Apparently it isn’t though, or at least wasn’t.
We didn’t think it implied anything, we just assumed it was another stupid nonsensical English word.
I guess it would be hard to know what people who don’t know might conclude if they think about it. But don’t most slang terms have some kind of near-surface etymology? Maybe someone could mistake it for being related to the practice of putting damp electronics in rice somehow. Idk, do you think the people who are opposed to its use are just muckraking?
There are a lot of words and phrases that don’t make sense at all in English, so I usually don’t question things very much. Maybe I’m the weird one but I’ve never seen anyone ask about why we use the word rice.
Idk, do you think the people who are opposed to its use are just muckraking?
Idk what muckraking is, but I think those opposed to it are mostly correct in their thinking. I just think that this isn’t quite the same as other similar examples. This use of the word rice is so far detached from racism that most people don’t even know about the connection. There is no intention of racism, there is no perception of racism. I see no problem.
