Is ricing racist? Drama ensures as Lemmings debate and Hexbear brigades yet another thread
Is ricing racist? Drama ensures as Lemmings debate and Hexbear brigades yet another thread
My biggest issue with discussions like this is how people insist that words can't change their meaning or leave their roots behind. How many people knew that "ricer" was racist though? Isn't that a good example of how a (potentially) racist term can leave behind its racist origins? Now, to be clear, I always thought "ricing" referred to tacky cars inspired by the Japanese modding community that were all visuals, no muscle, which means it could be considered mildly racist in that context. However it was my interpretation that they were called ricers because they look interesting but are white, cheap and bland underneath (still racist, but going in the other direction).
How many people didn't think it had any racist origins whatsoever though? How many people thought it was something else? Why are we so hellbent on enforcing the racist, sexist, whateverist history of these terms? It's understandable when someone gets upset over a word that's regularly used within the context of an -ism (like the n-word), but if a word has become so disconnected from its original meaning that no one is getting offended by it, why in gods name are you trying to reassociate it with something offensive!? Let it stay dead. What the fuck is wrong with you? At that point, you're taking a term which lost its status as a slur, and turning it back into a slur. WHYYYY? The only reason I can imagine someone doing something like that is for they either A) want pity points, or B) you're wanting to revive it as a slur under the guise of "social awareness" so you can use it yourself.
Edit: oh yeah, and obligatory "fuck hexbear". Quite honestly I wouldn't be surprised if they want more slurs to hurl because I get the feeling there are a lot of them that probably have exploding heads secondary accounts.
Edit 2: There's also the fact that, from what I've seen, there's some disagreement on where the term originated from. One speculated origin is from "riceburner", which was a derogatory term for Asian cars before they became seen as being high-quality and highly dependable. Another, however, is that it's a portmanteau of "rich" and "racer", referring to someone who has a lot of money but little knowledge when it comes to what actually makes a modded car "good". Either way, it's been genericized to the point where it seems silly to get offended over it, as a "ricer" can be someone of any ethnicity.
People want to be offended by everything these days. It may have started as a good thing to minimise abuse and discrimination, but by this point that target has been vastly overshot and has become an issue of abuse in itself.
It's often less about the meaning of the word changing and more people not being aware of its connotations. They can remain offensive to certain populations who just don't comment on it due to the prevalence.
With that said, my understanding has always been that ricer referred to the product rather than its owner. It seems strange seeing people use it when referring to PCs though.
I imagine the same kinds of people into car modding are also into modding other things. It probably isn't a huge overlap, but there are a lot of commonalities between the two. Additionally, a lot of Linux nerds also tend to be weebs and might have picked it up from Initial D or some other anime (never watched Initial D, but from the little I know about it, it'd make sense if the term appeared in it). The result is that it probably came from bleedover between the communities.
Fuck Hexbear for agreeing the word is racist and shouldn't be used going forward?
I get the feeling you completely ignored the point if my comment and likely aren't arguing in good faith, but fuck it, I'll bite:
Nah, fuck hexbear for getting offended on the behalf of others. If I saw asian-americans consistently getting offended by it then I'd feel differently because sometimes when you're in a marginalized community you need a signal boost; but in this case most people don't know and/or don't care, including a lot of asian-americans.
The context behind this view is that I'm a member of the LGBT community, and the number of times I've seen people get offended on our behalf regarding things we don't really care about is way too high, especially when it comes to members voluntarily using anti-lgbt slurs, either as an ironic statement or in an attempt to own them. Just because a word has a racist history doesn't mean it can't change.
Additionally, fuck hexbear in general for being tankies and using the LGBT community as a shield (among other things, like "brigading" meta posts in other instances that have anything to do with them, despite their own instance admins telling them not to). I dunno if you missed the drama, but they decided to beef with the owners of Blahaj.zone and then tried to claim that hexbear was LGBT-friendly and that blahaj.zone members were basically suffering from Stockholm syndrome whenever anyone tried to criticize them.
Iirc blahaj.zone's admins are both trans-women who created the instance to be an LGBT safe space.
That incident alone severely damaged my opinion of hexbear. At first they were just annoying, but that made me hate them.
This data suggests there's only 20 hexbear subscribers to unixporn (if I'm reading it right), but I'm guessing the influx comes from their members browsing All by 'New Comments'. For me, the word 'brigade' invokes the idea of it being co-ordinated in some way, rather than that there's a lot of them, and the subject matter is close to their hearts.
Anyway, the Community rules have been updated to dis-allow the term, so drama over I suppose.
I’m guessing the influx comes from their members browsing All by ‘New Comments’
I don't know why you would guess that instead of the more obvious answer of them actually systematically co-ordinating their posts to actually brigade. They always appear in groups larger than their subscriber numbers in communities outside of their own instance. That is their entire MO and reason for federating.
Even supported by their admins. They only intend to brigade, harass, and "dunk on" other instances with bad faith arguments and emoji spam.
If that's their plan, it was a very long plan in the making. Admirable, in a way.
I'd be as interested as anyone in seeing the secret Hexbear communities where they conspire, or perhaps leaked screenshots from whatever chat app they find ethically acceptable. Until then, I'm more likely to believe in the "Brigade Effect" rather than actual Brigades.
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I always took it to stand for Racing Inspired Cosmetic Enhancement where people spent a bunch of money on a cheap can just to make it look cool without adding any actual functionality.
This puts a whole new spin on the 'riced squash' I see as the grocery, given they're obviously 'ricing' the squash to obtain 'riced' squash.
Could ricing also mean "to render into a rice-like format"? Could the word have a non-cruel meaning?
DID NO ONE ASK WHAT RISOTTO MEANS?
I'm still not even sure what the term means..
My understanding, from a motorcycle enthusiast perspective, is that the term "rice burners" referred to Japanese racing bikes that run on alcohol fuels derived from rice.
Growing up kids called any Japanese car a rice burner because ... Japanese people eat a lot of rice. Yeah there definite racism going on, it's not saki-powered motorcycles.
Customizing appearance, the apparent racist origin of the term is no longer relevant as very few would even know it and even fewer would use it in a racist context
I'm not about to start screaming that xyz is racist, but I would argue that just because very few would know or recognize that something has racist origins that doesn't (in my opinion) make it okay to use. I would hope that people could come up with another term to use that conveys the same message.
Some context would be useful.
I've never heard of ricing but come to think of it I have heard of "rice rocket" to describe Kawasaki motor bikes so that's probably a titch racist.
Hate me some hexbear but they’re right. I’ve seen discussions about ricing being a racist term for over a decade and moving away from it seems reasonable.
They're 100% right (for once… I guess broken clock style 🤦🏻♀️). Can't believe some Unix modders are still using that word, I thought we had this discussion a decade ago.
When rice/ricing is used in Linux customization, it has nothing to do with the Japanese, Asians, or their cars.
I can see issue if ricing a desktop environment meant "made it look like it was from Asia" or "filled excessively with anime (or other asian thing)" kind of stereotype, but it's not. There is no association with the pejorative meaning, so no problem.
Why are people squabbling over this? This is so silly. Use ricing, don't use it, call it something else, I don't give a shit.
Tell that to git and moving away from master as a default branch.
My argument is the same for that.
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