Hey, we should all really stop using racist slang to refer to customozation

blashork [she/her]@hexbear.net to Unixporn@lemmy.ml – 132 points –

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.

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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."

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)

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.

https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna18615542

https://ftloscience.com/producing-biofuel-from-rice-husk/

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.