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

    • fool@discuss.tchncs.deOP
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      2 days ago

      edit: I rescind this comment because I seem to have misunderstood what the commenter meant by reclaiming. Sorry, I did not mean to be hateful.

      • AntiOutsideAktion@lemmy.ml
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        2 days ago

        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

  • merthyr1831@lemmy.ml
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    1 day ago

    This will and probably has got a bunch of flak but I’m with you. There’s nothing wrong with recognising when we can pick a better term for something we enjoy.

    Like, I get why people use “-porn” as a suffix and it isn’t offensive to me but I still won’t use that in a workplace. It’d be cool if someone thought of a better neologism!

  • comfy@lemmy.ml
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    1 day ago

    Spice/spiced could work. But it’s still an allusion, not sure if that defeats the point.

    For example, 4chan forcibly invented the use of the ok hand for “white power”, as a collective prank

    Which, outside of specific contexts where you’re already confident someone is a WN, was quickly forgotten and never really took off. It’s not a great example of a social shift.

  • mvirts@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Pocking

    Pocked up

    I.e. peacocking, making it awesome and flashy and sharing with others

    Quick reach a consensus before the yungins start posting rizzed out setups

  • Dessalines@lemmy.ml
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    2 days ago

    I removed this because it has nothing to do with linux specifically, and as expected, it brought out a lot of people defending the use of this historically racist term, and /asablackman’ing it.

    I’ve reinstated it and removed the offending comments for now.

    Also I don’t know why this needs a discussion at all. There’s hundreds of words in english for something that looks good, and you can be more specific about it : snazzy, sleek, cool, streamlined, nifty, retro

    • fl42v@lemmy.ml
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      2 days ago

      removed the offending comments

      In one of which an Asian dude literally says it’s not used as a derogatory anymore. Talk about being offended for others

      • araneae@beehaw.org
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        2 days ago

        I saw a BlackPeopleTwitter post yesterday where one local (so, black) user gave another Asian user a coveted “invite to the cookout” for posting some decently well meaning kinda intersectionalist words, and they ATE THE FORMER USER ALIVE, saying paraphrased obviously “we give this privelage out way too readily to people who evidence the bare minimum decency”. Some people want to gel so bad they jump the gun and so you can’t assume one minority giving you a privelage related to their community stands for all in the community. The paradox of the N-pass.

        • codexarcanum@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          2 days ago

          The paradox of the n-word pass is similar to the paradox of the daoist leader; if you were of good enough character (as an outsider/Bourgeoisie) to warrant the privilege of leadership/cookout, then you’d be wise enough to never want to use them.

      • Dessalines@lemmy.ml
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        2 days ago

        An stranger on the internet just gave you license to say a historically racist term, how convenient for you. Next they’ll be some /r/asablackman posters saying its okay for you to use the n-word, because it doesn’t bother them.

        • fl42v@lemmy.ml
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          2 days ago

          Should they’ve included a selfie or an id pic? Because when black ppl use that n-word you’re trying to draw parallels with (which, BTW, is still a derogatory towards a person and has no other meanings, as far as I’m aware) nobody gets offended. And, aside from the use of the “r-word”, their comment was a valid opinion on topic asking for that opinion

          • ProfessorOwl_PhD [any]@hexbear.net
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            2 days ago

            It’s not like black people using the N-word, it’s like white people using the n-word because a stranger on the internet said it’s ok.

            aside from the use of the “r-word”

            You don’t think them casually dropping a slur might invalidate their opinion on whether a different word is a slur? Fucking LLM-ass logic right there.

            • fl42v@lemmy.ml
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              8 hours ago

              The “r-word” in question refers to the being food discussed (although it’s not really a discussion, given we have the correct opinion and “your comment is getting deleted” opinion) in the post, since we’re apparently deleting comments for using it now. Hence the quotation marks.

              As for the 1st paragraph, (a) i’m arguing it’s nowhere like using the n-word at all, and (b) it was said by the Asian dude, so I don’t see how so.

    • AntiOutsideAktion@lemmy.ml
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      2 days ago

      Yeah but it doesn’t affect me and I’m fine with using a racist term because I choose not to think about it. That should make it fine for everyone.

      I’m not racist I’m just so tired of all this anti-racist stuff @[email protected]

  • Hermes [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    2 days ago

    Maybe call it a ‘ride’? It would still be a car reference, think about how people talk about cars as their ‘rides’. At least to my understanding, calling a car a ‘ride’ also implies some level of the car being special. ‘ride’ is also only 4 letters, and isn’t any harder to type, some of the other comments have really long terms which are a bit annoying to type.

    On the negative side it is also 1 letter away from ‘rice’, so that might not be ideal.