I’d learned about this last week, and this stuff is a bunch of Wikipedia searches so forgive me if I miss anything :]
Similar to git master and whitelist/blacklist having addressed racist origins, I’ve just learned that “ricing” – i.e. way-far-from-default, colorfully souped-up *nix customizations – came from a derogatory word for Asian “riced out” cars.
(click to enlarge spot where I came to learn about this)
Example in the lemmy.ml/c/linux community.
The linked Wikipedia article doesn’t list *nix ricing specifically, but it’s probably not a far reach – for example, tech’s master-slave came from cars too.
Now I’m not here to start a debate on whether the term itself is bad. The arguments are done to death and predictable (old threadhope I can link here). Rather, I posit that we could probably invent a new term if we forced it hard enough.
For example, 4chan forcibly invented the use of the ok hand for “white power”, as a collective prank (Wikipedia).
Further, Tumblr invented 'then beg' as an insult response to 'I beg your pardon/to differ'. (click to enlarge)
Based on Pukicho.
So why can’t Lemmy invent something too?
Here are some earlier takes. (click to enlarge for source, but they are listed below anyway)
I surmise it has to be (1) somewhat unique and (2) short and nounable/verbable.
- Customization doesn’t fit – it’s too broad. Changing the wallpaper is a customization – diagonalizing your screen is a rice (term to be replaced…).
- Bespoke doesn’t fit either. That’s for a duct-tape script you hack together.
- Pimping out… is not a good alternative. It preexists(citation needed?) and has inertia but it’s not any better.
- Souping up… doesn’t roll off the tongue so much. But it’s food-related (and thus not far from “rice”). Though I can’t see myself saying “Yo, check out this epic soup.”
Brainstorming welcome :P
This is a tough one, because to me “ricing” or “riced out” carries additional negative undertones (racism aside). I have always heard it used in a way implying that it was referencing enhancements done in a cheap or gaudy/classless way. Think of the most Razer-like LED adorned gaming PC setup, that could have easily been described as being “riced up”.
I think the phrase “decked out” works OK, and seems to also lack the negative connotation, which may or not be in line with the goal here.
Also, seeing your example ideas you shot down, I am not sure you full understand “souping up” phrase. The term “souped up” has been in use for over a century and I still hear people use it pretty frequently. It is generally meant to imply something has been made faster or more powerful, frequently with cars, and probably why some people argue it is a shortened version of supercharged. I agree that it probably isn’t a good fit here, but not being of how it sounds.
We need to make it offensive to white people instead. So colonising.
i don’t think we ought to be implying that colonization is cool.
imo it’s not much more offensive than the term ricing but meh, just a bad joke
rizzing?
Maybe we shouldn’t invent new terms for races?
I’m calling it giving the dirstro top surgery from now on
Customization is good!
I’m shreking up my arch install rn
Sometimes, I Miles Edward O’Brien my VM GPU passthrough.
I just shreked my opensuse
I’ve Farquaad my network stack!
You’re compensating for something with your network stack?
Ebbin my neezerinstall until it scrooges
The only insult I know of this “ricing” term is, that its meant to be pretty only without performance. This comes from ricing Japanese cars. It is not racist and has nothing to do with Japanese people. The insult has nothing to do with that.
Here I am, an Asian, reclaim it to be neutral meaning. I will still use ricing.
Go check any English Asia Linux Group, especially on YouTube and Facebook Group, people are using ricing neutrally.
Language change with time, and making it neutral is totally fine and okay.
Yeah I hope it gets reclaimed too! Kind of like how queer got reclaimed.
Idk I’m still trying to fully grok it. This community does suggest it should be changed, so maybe we could just have a good replacement in-house?
edit: added in-house
I love when slurs are ‘reclaimed’ by people the slur doesn’t refer to.
Like how we ‘reclaimed’ all those native american stereotypes for sports teams
This comment shouldn’t have been removed.
lol even funnier that this western-centric Lemmy removed my comment about ricing, while actual Linux community CJK countries or English Asia does not recognize it as a slur and use ricing neutrally. Basically reclaims it.
White knight syndrome so much.
Personally I’d put a higher priority on stamping out that use of “porn”.
LOL yeah that’s a nice thing to put in the company search history
Agreed. This term “unixporn” bugs me. I cannot recommend those platforms to anyone, because of the direct use of “porn” term. Its like kiddies made up the term unixporn or something…
Dots!
I love the idea, it covers most instances of extreme customization in Linux.
Like dotfiles. Where most of the customizing happens.
I dotted up my dwm install?
Its kind of verbable :p
Please report posts & comments that make use of the term on lemmy.ml; we remove them.
Don’t worry about it, nobody says that any more. It died out with Gentoo.
No, Gentoo is alive! I can catch up to upstream Firefox’s LTO+Clang+PGO optimizations and use my own version of Debian alternatives and save 3MB by removing iso9660 support from REFind!
Oooh so I’m not the only one who uses (used) refind with Gentoo!
@fool wait, how is this racist?
ricist
Edit: aparently it has chinese origins about modding cars so it is racist (?).
Originally it was a pejorative term for Japanese and East-Asian car modders: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice_burner Than the term moved from car modding subculture to computer UI modding subculture.
Interestingly, the place I heard it was in a completely different context, different meaning, but same derogatory connotation. In DoTA 2 esports, the Chinese pro teams were known for spending a lot of time “farming,” (acquiring resources in a mostly passive way that can be a little boring to watch) so some people started calling that “ricing.” “Farming”, but Chinese, so “ricing.”
The old thread about it covers both sides of the coin.
Basically, “ricing” insulted weird Asian car customizations -> “ricing” became a more generic “weird” customization term (this is the most famous transitive example I can think of) -> ricing’s origin was forgotten by a decent amount of people. (I mentioned it in the first spoilered text)
But I’d like to keep the focus on yoloing a term out of nowhere :D
@fool so it’s racist because we of Asian descent tend to eat rice? Are other Asians asking automobile enthusiasts not to use this or is it basic white girl stuff?
The origins are in reference to asian-americans customizing their cars as “ricing” them.
Many daily-used words come from derogatory older meaning, it does not mean the current word with its current use is racist
Personally I don’t feel either way about this stuff being racist or not. I’m an Asian and I am completely unaffected. But I do think that some people are, and it’d probably be nice to help those people vs. ignoring them.
For git master specifically, it was based off of a foggy memory of something in my RSS feed, and I was just pointing out that it was something that some companies addressed.
You’re in good faith so that’s cool. I just think those are kind of a waste of time because it throws bad shade over antiracism while it is still very much needed
Yeah, mods are power-tripping.
Gonna need a new Linux community soon.
Yeah always nice to be censored for stating facts
