2w ago

Maybe Lemmy can forcibly invent a new term for "ricing". (Good faith pls)

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.

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 thread_hope _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).

So why can't Lemmy invent something too?

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

98 comments

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!
- -gasm!
  jk I don't have any better ideas

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.

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...
- @kbal @fool word.

I'm shreking up my arch install rn
- I've Farquaad my network stack!
  
  You're compensating for something with your network stack?
- I just shreked my opensuse
- Ebbin my neezerinstall until it scrooges

rizzing?

Isn't it the same as tuning?
Although it's unclear what tuning is because it depends on who says it:
It does mean doing modifications to a vehicle for actual performance improvements
It's used extensively by ricers to describe themselves and their hobby and they think it's a positive term
It's used extensively by people who dislike ricing and most definitely as a derogatory term
Yet for all its faults, I believe that's the closest word to ricing you'll find that is universally understood, neutral and isn't rendered hopelessly bland and meaningless by the process of political correctness newspeak.
- a different comment was saying ricing has a sense of being overdone. So with this I was thinking of "overtuning." I think it fits more as a hobbyist term than a pragmatic one.

Is "ricing" not originally related to customised cars from street racing or something? I personally don't see an issue with it.
The activity itself is quite good for making people aware of how a desktop linux OS is working but doing it excessively is a bit silly so makes sense for jt to have a silly name.
- Is "ricing" not originally related to customised cars from street racing or something?
  It is not, as I learned 18d ago https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/12165688
  Riced out is an adjective denigrating a badly customized sports car, "usually with oversized or ill-matched exterior appointments". ... Examples of "rice burner" used literally, meaning one who burns rice or rice fields, as in stubble burning, date to 1917. In 1935 it appeared in a US newspaper caption with a racial connotation, disparaging East Asian people. ... In some cases, users of the term assert that it is not offensive or racist, or else treat the term as a humorous, mild insult rather than a racial slur.
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice_burner
- From what I understand its origin in street racing was because japanese drivers (specifically? might have been Asian more generally) were souping up cars to look pretty but still not run great. I'm hazy on the details and my google-fu is failing me - I wish I had a more precise answer but overall I recall being bummed out at how even the origins of the term weren't as clean as I had hoped.
  
  The term wasn't about Japanese drivers, it was about Japanese cars. They were called "rice burners" as in they were fueled by rice, not gasoline. I guess that was someone's joke that became wide spread.
  You're right that it was sort of derogatory to refer to cars that had all their customization on things like giant exhausts, huge wheels, neon lights, rather than performance improvements.
  I've never heard the term used to refer to the ethnicity of the driver, just the ethnicity of the car, so I don't think it's racist, shrug.

Saw the .de domain and my first thought was this was about using a potato ricer to make spätzle. I may not be normal.

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.

I thought hard on this (I just like naming things). I came up with gemming. Graphical Environment Management. Unixgems.
It sorta works because customizing your environment is sort of like putting the finishing gems on it.
- I think you might win.

…modding?

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
- 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
  
  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.
  
  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.
- 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 @john89@lemmy.ca

I'm calling it giving the dirstro top surgery from now on

I've always used decked regarding to it.

The same car mod term in the 50s was 'hotrodding'.

Pixel polishing. A term we use for frontend code at work (all backend developers).

oh hey, i'm in that screenshot!

Can't people refer to it as their personalized setups? Or is that too hard to write?
- Ricing isn't exactly the same as personalized though.
  Ricing when it comes to cars is putting on a giant wing and a huge muffler on a Honda Civic.
  Ricing in the Gentoo community is turning on every compiler optimization flag for the main portage config file without knowing what they're doing, potentially actually de-optimizing your setup.
  There's an element of "overdone" involved usually whenever someone is called a ricer.
  
  To personalize your setup, is to deviate from the default config to better match your preferences - whatever those may be, however over the top those may be.
  That doesn't imply any optimization, unless it's what you personally prefer.
- Yeah but that's missing the flair required by people who spend their evenings adjusting the radial blur on the window borders.
  
  I have yet to see a personalized setup with blurred window borders xD

So Fetch

Oh god, this stuff is so tiring.

Decked out? Cranked?
- I thought about "decked out", though then people would say "look at my deck", potentially creating ambiguity between card games and spiffy desktops.
  
  And extra ambiguity with people talking about polishing their deck while also pronouncing it as dick
  
  I mean there is an overlap between Linux users and those who play card games

Noodles - it's a mess of dotfiles
- I assume you're joking - this is just a different food/culture/race association.
  
  The idea of suggesting the word "noodles" doesn't come from a racial point-of-view. I'm using "noodles" to describe the mess of dotfiles, which is like saying "spaghetti code" for poorly written code.
  I guess you can argue it has a race association as the only reason we are coming up with a new word is because the old word is racist.
  
  what's the association of noodles?

opening the linked thread like:

Anyways I'm gay and transgender, so I've decided that from now on I'm saying that I'm transing my desktop.
Jokes aside, going from repressed neutral boy clothes to vibrant and colorful girl clothes and makeup and feeling cute has been such a great part of transitioning. This is kind of how I see customizing my desktop now. It always comes with such boring dry defaults, so I trans her gender and give her a makeover and now my computer is all pretty. So I'm sticking with transing.

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

maybe something derived from dekotora? it has most of the same associations as the term we're looking to replace while not having racist or pejorative origins. deko?

Interface tailoring, desktop tapestry, jamming all up in my pazaaz.

@fool wait, how is this racist?
- ricist
  Edit: aparently it has chinese origins about modding cars so it is racist (?).
- 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?
- 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.

Customizing the shit out of
- I like this one.

Maybe we shouldn't invent new terms for races?

Dots!
- Like dotfiles. Where most of the customizing happens.
- I dotted up my dwm install?
  Its kind of verbable :p
- I love the idea, it covers most instances of extreme customization in Linux.

Customization is good!

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!
  It seems pretty alive to me though. 5/25 of the month-top-posts in r/unixporn have it in the title, and I'm sure more are present in the comments. And a lot of YT videos on it still mention it.

eye-rolling

Please report posts & comments that make use of the term on lemmyml; we remove them.

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.
  
  "Waltzing". cool people dance to 3:3
  
  imo it's not much more offensive than the term ricing but meh, just a bad joke

Can't rice our Linux distros or cars because of woke
Jokes aside, RICE means "Race-inspired cosmetic enhancement" apparently
- Creating a backronym for a term doesn’t absolve it of its racist roots.
  
  How is the term "racist" if it specifically refers to Japanese cars, not Japanese drivers
  
  You just sent me a wikipedia article about a car on a thread about linux customisation

98 comments