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”?
Sorry friend, but reasoning with these people is always changing.
If you think it’s ok and you’re not from the affected demography, you can’t have a voice and “you’re probably white”.
If you think it’s ok and you’re actually from the affected demography, you’re just too dumb to understand your condition and have to let the white saviors and the “right” people from your demography explain to you why you should be angry and offended at everything.
Asian here and rice eater here.
Ah yes, you need all your ethos cred for this one. No pick-me behavior for the crackers here. Not like there are billions of others with the same description as you (including a bangladeshi immigrant like me). I didn’t bring my own race into this until the “Im asian and this is okay” posts happened.
It’s better to regain is neutral meaning instead of letting the racist weaponize neutral word.
Racists love “neutral words.” It’s called dog whistling. Racists get their plausible deniability while they get to signal and exchange with other racists on public forums like this one. It doesn’t matter if you didn’t intend for this to happen, it’s still facilitated here. There’s always the possibility of new words, or are you too personally attached to “rice” for that to happen?
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.
We are in a international, primarily english speaking lemmy instance by the developers of the project. Stop moving the goalposts here. We are not in your rhetorical places in “Asia” where there’s no negative connotation. Of course it will seem “western centric.”
For your last edit, fuck right off. People can see through your crocodile tears and self tokenization. This type of shit only works with white people who will accept your opinions more than others because it means they get to keep their status quo. Nice bringing up imperialism, you’d be great as a lapdog.
Unfortunately not surprised to see some unironic /r/asablackman going on here.
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 :/
Ah, thanks.
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.
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.
Thank you for making this post. The number of times I’ve seen the term used here lately has been bothering me.
Everything bothers you
This bothers me
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.
This is the same shit as with r/animemes and the word trap back on reddit.
ITT:
The "pick-me"s are almost as bad
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.
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
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.
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?
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?
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?
- 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?
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.
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
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.)
too much discussion on your discussion platform?
China, or Taiwan
Yes, I listed Taiwan separately from China.
Lol now you just trolling.
they’re a so-called taiwanese comprador you can pay them no mind
now you’re trolling too
cry harder comprador
Just in case you didn’t know, your comment along with the other replies are a perfect example of brigading.
lmao the absolute condescension
I was participating in this thread before you, finding it on my all/active feed
go back to reddit if you want to whine about brigading
Why does 50% of hexbears tell people they don’t like to go back to reddit? I am never going back.
because brigades are a reddit thing but go off
says the hexbear while brigading
Lemmy user when they complain about people commenting on their social media site
Instance has comparatively high and active userbase with a very high percentage of Linux users
Is this brigading?
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 | 61These 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 | 100You’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.
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.
Cool. Your instance had like 22 users subscribed to lemmy.ml/c/unixporn. Stop pretending you all lurk this community and finally decided to comment all at the same time.
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.
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 👍
Eat shit.
Yeah I’ll accept your surrender as well. Back to your little safe space now, skip to it.
You are literally crying about us being in your safe space, nerd.
This thread has 400 comments. It’s on everyone’s feed who federated with lemmy.ml
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
Noooooo don’t comment on our public post on social media that we purposely allowed you to comment on
Brigading the fuck out of our comrade’s thread…?
We can’t defend ourselves when called out or support each other outside of hexbear.net without being called out for brigrading.
Ya all losing your minds.
there is no such thing as “brigading” in federation. it is just people commenting you don’t agree with
It’s brigaiding when people you don’t like comment on posts that everyone can see on the website we all use
Big brain take right here
rent free
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.
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.
When repos changed to main from master, I got problems.
No you just harbor already racist attitudes. There are a non-trivial amount of people who dislike arbitrary, antiquated terminology used in computer science like “master/slave” “male/female” and of course “master branch.” Simply getting out your bullhorn and asking “who’s actually offended by this?” is demeaning to the issue at hand which goes much farther than just a historical analysis of racism.
Jfc you people never stop.
Maybe they’re pissed because they have tons of repos using master and changing all that to main or dealing with some that are main, some are master, especially having set your default branch is a pita is a lot just because someone might be offended? Seems fine to be upset.
Like people can be all for being aware of societal issues and rectifying past mistakes but there was never any “slave” branch here and master never held any bad connotation to begin with.
I’ve dealt with this and it’s not the end if the world but it’s also dumb it ever got to be this big a deal.
This is indeed the silliest debate.
I used the term master for years, never really thought about it. I think I assumed it was referring to a master key (from which other keys are copied), rather than anything to do with ownership of people.
Then some people felt offended by it because they interpreted it differently than I did.
So… I changed the word I used. Like, it was the easiest thing in the world to do. “Main” is fine too, rolls right off the tongue, and if it happens to make a group of people feel less discriminated against than that’s all the motivating I need.
I also changed my repos as I updated them. It was like two commands and maybe a couple of lines in a CI config file. Trivial, even for dozens of them.
Today I wonder what the big deal is. If it really is “just a word”, well… so is main. Both words. If the one we’re using isn’t actually important then why resist changing it?
Seems to me like active resistance is kind of an indicator that maybe it really was about the word all along.
It’s a whole different animal when it’s a company with thousands of repos…
I don’t agree. I work for a very large company with an ungodly number of repos and a huge CI build pipeline; today they have all been converted to “main”. It wasn’t that hard.
OK well good for you. I just disagree.
No Asians are.
This is more about power and control than racism.
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?
ACKTCHYUALLY, the people whom this issue affects don’t even care, it’s only white liberals making a big deal out of it!!
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.
Well that’s easy to say when you are not part of the affected group.
But …
I am an Asian living in Asia. And I wouldn’t know the racism encountered by someone over other continents. Hence the question.
Peter Russell makes fun of India people.
Jo Koy makes fun of Phillipine people.
Jing Yang makes fun of Chinese people.
Fluffy makes fun of Mexican people.
Colored people can call each other N words.
Even white comedians joke that the people most sensitive are the people who are not in the affected groups.
I;m not gonna discuss your point about comedians because honestly that sounds nonsense to me, however the only reason I’m replying to you is because there is a keypoint in your comment:
I am an Asian living in Asia. And I wouldn’t know the racism encountered by someone over other continents.
This very much is why you may not see why this is an issue, if you truly are an Asian living in Asia you didn’t grow up not have experienced life as a minority group, let me tell you that despite whatever origins a person may have I’m pretty sure that every Asian person that lives in a western country could relate with the underlying racism towards them ingrained in a way that every time they try to bring this issues up they are dismissed as they were not possible of being victims of racism because a lot of Asians are successful or they skin light or whatever bullshit reason.
There is whole problematic and systematic about this and although I have my own opinion and experiences I will not expand further as I am also not an academic, I can only speak for myself.
Yes please, I agree.
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.
