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.

    • HuntressHimbo@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Its a term invented to make fun of specifically Asian men customizing their cars. The implicit connotation is “your car is bad because it is customized for looks and not racing, like an Asian person would.” It shares the same roots as incels calling Asian incels ricecels.

        • HuntressHimbo@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          Oh no, you got me. I solo wrote the Wikipedia page describing the origins of the term and its racist roots and all the citations linked from there, especially the ones written before I was born. I’m also personally sock puppetting the dozen or so accounts telling you you’re wrong.

          Or, and I know this will be a big stretch, you could change your wordview a single iota in response to new information and put forth the negligible effort to not use it anymore.

    • Montagge@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Some of us leave our rooms. Yes I’ve heard it a lot throughout my life. Not as much recently, but the newer generations seem to be more respectful. Not that the bar was very high for that.

        • Montagge@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          I’ve spent time in almost all 50 US states and they’re all pretty racist. So I don’t know where you’re spending time where racism isn’t a thing. Judging by your comments on here you’re most likely turning a blind eye to it.

          • Solemn@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            1 year ago

            A lot of goodhearted people also just seem to be completely ignorant of it too. Plenty of people will say something racist, say they’re not racist when you point it out, and immediately express deeply rooted racist opinions afterwards. But they’re nice to you right now, cause they’re too nice to be racist.

        • Solemn@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          1 year ago

          Literally anywhere outside of major cities. I’ve experienced in your face racism in most places under at least half a million in population.

    • Throwaway@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      I swear these people spend more time learning ye olde slurs and making up new ones than actual racists.

      All they want to do is change what we call stuff, its about having power and influence.

      • motherfucker [they/them, she/her]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        Getting people acclimated to obeying authority by starting with menial commands is a real thing. For it to work, the person doing it needs to have some authority and the commands actually have to be things that the other person won’t object to. Do these people have authority over you? Does changing how you talk about Unix desktops seems like a reasonable command to start that process?

        Now, I have no problem with viewing random strangers as authority figures if that’s what you’re into, but it seems a lot more likely that you’ve used this idea of compelled-language-as-social-control as a thought-terminating cliche to justify not thinking about why someone might care about randos online using the word “ricing”. And to be fair, it seems like a weird use a mental energy if the point is to assert dominance, but at the same time, you’re the one engaging with it, so what does that say about you?

      • HuntressHimbo@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        No, there are just a metric shit ton of English words and terms that hail from our very much more racist past, and we would like our speech to reflect our values and not the values of our KKK grandparents.