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
I think the difference is that with the n-word both the targets of the insult and the non-targets recognize it as an insult. Meanwhile considering the rice-word, both parties either only know the current-day meaning or think that the insult and the description of someone making their car look (but not function) like a race car are 2 different terms with different origin.
You also seem to imply that the asian poster might have just been a white person trying to prove their point. Well here is a video of a chinese-american using it (and not as some kind of “protest slur” or what’s the term for rappers using the n-word in their songs) https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=68sTT4mFTnA
I agree that using terms with racist origin is bad but I think that this term outside of the linux circles cannot be racist because nobody even knows it was racist at some point. edit: Obviously it should stop being used inside the linux circles because a) people here are more likely to read the wikipedia article than watch hours of automotive video content and b) the term does not even make sense for linux desktops because it just means “to make your desktop look cool”. There aren’t cosmetic linux desktop mods that make the computer look fast or like supercomputer or whatever.