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.

  • midnight@lemmy.one
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    1 year ago

    Look ma, another one! Do you all take shifts on duty watching this thread?

    Different opinions being challenging your collective definition of the word being inherently racist. You can hem and haw all you want but meanings can change over time. If it can start being used racially at one point it can surely stop at another.

    • QuietCupcake [any, they/them]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      Look ma, another one! Do you all take shifts on duty watching this thread?

      This is my only comment in this thread. I clicked on this post because it showed up in my feed, simple as. Everyone who talks about hexbear brigading, piling on, or “taking shifts” doesn’t understand how federation works. Hexbear has been a highly active website with a large userbase for years now, so I don’t know what you would you expect to happen when a large discussion-based website shows content… the people on that website are going to discuss that content.

      meanings can change over time. If it can start being used racially at one point it can surely stop at another.

      This is true. But the group of people who get to decide whether or not something is racist is the group that is the target of that racism. White people don’t get to decide the n-word is no longer racist. Hetero people don’t get to decide the 3-letter f-word isn’t homophobic. And no individual gets to decide because it’s a cultural issue. Obviously meanings of words change and evolve, but they do so organically, and trying to force a racist term into regular usage and then say “it’s not racist anymore because I wasn’t intending to use it that way” is itself some really racist shit.

      • midnight@lemmy.one
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        1 year ago

        Everyone who talks about hexbear brigading, piling on, or “taking shifts” doesn’t understand how federation works.

        Just because there are some users that stumble upon content semi-organically doesn’t mean brigading and piling on isn’t happening. I would hope you guys aren’t actually taking shifts. Hello hyperbole. And none of that indicates someone doesn’t understand how federation works, are you sure you understand how it works?

        the group of people who get to decide whether or not something is racist is the group that is the target of that racism

        They’re also the group that gets to decide if they’re offended/if something qualifies as racist toward them. You’ll notice OP never indicated if they were part of this group, and by them recently learning the roots of the term as it relates to the car scene I’d guess they’re not. Hello virtue signaling.

        Hetero people don’t get to decide the 3-letter f-word isn’t homophobic

        When it relates to homosexuality, I agree. When in another context, like… oh say British slang, it’s not at all. Context matters, that’s the whole point here.

        trying to force a racist term into regular usage … is itself some really racist shit

        I’m not going to concede your assertion that ricing in this context is racist. Nobody is forcing anything, ricing in this context has been a non racial term for as long as I’ve seen it used to describe customizing DEs. This is what something changing organically looks like. Unless you can point me to a source showing the term as it relates to linux was intentionally used to try to dull the racist origins in the car world you can go sit with the other hexbear virtue signalers in this post.

        • space_comrade [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          Just because there are some users that stumble upon content semi-organically doesn’t mean brigading and piling on isn’t happening.

          You have any proof of this or are you just assuming that happens because you can’t fathom that many people actually disagreeing with you?

          • midnight@lemmy.one
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            1 year ago

            You’ll notice your comrade is the one that mentioned brigading. I only said there were a lot of hexbear users piling onto people that disagree with OP, which is obvious reading through the post. I can’t hold your hand on that though, if you don’t possess the reading comprehension to see that that’s on you.

            • space_comrade [he/him]@hexbear.net
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              1 year ago

              You’re obnoxious. Hexbear is one of the largest instances, comparable to lemmy.ml which is where this was posted. There are also users from lemmy.ml and other instances agreeing with OP.

              You’re just a huge fucking baby that thinks encountering lots of opposing opinions must be some grand conspiracy against you.

              • midnight@lemmy.one
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                1 year ago

                Again with the lack of reading comprehension. Did I say it was only hexbear users piling on? No. I just pointed out that there are a lot of hexbear users piling on. Your persecution complex is showing.

                I’m not sure where you assumed I"m upset about anything here or that I think there’s a conspiracy against me. Hello projection.

                • space_comrade [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                  1 year ago

                  Your persecution complex is showing.

                  Right back at you. Nobody is “piling on”, there’s just more people disagreeing with you than agreeing, deal with it baby.

                  • midnight@lemmy.one
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                    1 year ago

                    Lmao are you gonna bust out the I’m rubber you’re glue next? You lack reading comprehension and you’ve devolved to throwing insults instead of having a discussion.

                    If you can’t see all the hexbear users piling onto those that disagree with OP I don’t know what to tell you.

                    Good luck out there.

        • ProfessorOwl_PhD [any]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          Yes, there must be brigading going on, it’s not like there’s some sort of “front page” for federated instances that just anyone can browse, where active discussions like this would be promoted over less active content.

          • midnight@lemmy.one
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            1 year ago

            🥱 read your shift change notes. The line you’re taking has already been quashed.

            • ProfessorOwl_PhD [any]@hexbear.net
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              Been quashed? You’re claiming that users could only semi-organically stumble upon this post, when your continual engagement has kept it at a healthy position in the active feed for the past 2 days. If it weren’t for your insistence on being racist none of us would have seen the post at all.

              • midnight@lemmy.one
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                1 year ago

                Right, I forgot you fools lack reading comprehension skills and the ability to recognize nuance.

                I didn’t say there was brigading going on, your comrade brought that up. I simply said just because some users were arriving organically doesn’t mean brigading is out of the question. The original point, which continues to be evident, is that there are a ton of hexbear users piling on to anyone that doesn’t fall in line with OP. You all seem to conveniently ignore that and straw man into bringing up brigading and hurling insults. You prove my point every time a new one engages. Every. Time.

                The only remotely racist users I’ve seen here are, unsurprisingly, hexbear users. You’re the main ones attempting to nurture a term in a different context to try to get a completely different community to use your preferred racist definition. If you truly were anti-racist I would have expected celebration of the death of a racist term in the car community by way of the unixporn community using it with pride to show off their DEs.

                Instead you cling for dear life onto your racist definition like conservatives do to the fucking electoral college and FPTP. It’s really telling.

                Edit: I went ahead and queried the lemmy database from a federated instance I have access to.

                These are the top 3 instances commenting in this specific post at the time of writing (2023-08-25 08:02 UTC):

                instance   | count
                -------------+-------
                hexbear.net |   205
                lemmy.ml    |   106
                lemm.ee     |    61
                

                These are the top 3 instances and their comment counts on any post in lemmy.ml/c/unixporn this month at the time of writing:

                domain    | count
                -------------+-------
                lemmy.ml    |   210
                hexbear.net |   210
                lemm.ee     |   100
                

                You’re reading that right, hexbear has a whopping FIVE comments in this community that are not part of this post.

                For the curious, those 5 comments at the time of writing are:

                One of which is especially hilarious as we see a hexbear user that’s been railing on people in this post using the very term they’re condemning here. Strong convictions? Perhaps bandwagoning the hexbear teet? Who knows. Definitely not suspicious 🙄

                • ProfessorOwl_PhD [any]@hexbear.net
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                  “I didn’t say there’s any brigading going on, I just said there’s some brigading going on - look, this incredibly popular post has more engagement than any of our other posts!”

                  The absolute brazen dishonesty you’re engaging in the whole way through this thread is disgusting, and why you get piled on to. The fact is that you’re pretending a racist term isn’t racist (in the same way as calling stealing “jewing” isn’t racist, I suppose (just to make sure you understand, it’s very racist)), and your only real argument is “all the hexbears are piling in and being mean :(”, not some justification for why taking a racist term for improving the look of a car without improving its performance isn’t racist when you apply the exact same term, without altering the concept in any way, to computers.

                  • midnight@lemmy.one
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                    1 year ago

                    Here, let me help you. My first comment in this post, please show me where I said there’s brigading going on. I didn’t. And the fact that you read my edit and equated that to me saying there’s brigading going on is extremely telling. Again, your comrades brought up brigading, not me.

                    You want to talk about brazen dishonesty? Look at the rest of you and yours and how you constantly rephrase what’s been said to benefit your own narrative. Disgusting is right. I got piled onto from that very first comment before the edit lol, how revisionist of you to pretend things that came up later in the thread were what caused the thread to happen. And to be clear, no part of what I’ve said is “hexbears are being mean” or crying about it. That’s the straw man each of you have been constructing to try and skirt your own racist tendencies.

                    It’s interesting that you’re equating a word that doesn’t refer to a group of people outside of a racist context (rice) with one that explicitly refers to an ethnoreligious group. Do you see how hard you people are working to make the term racist? The argument centers around semantic change and how hexbears are leading the charge to try to proliferate the usage of the term as racist. The concept isn’t altered? Please tell me which group is belittled when utilizing it in the unixporn context.

                    term for improving the look of a car without improving its performance

                    You’ll also notice even your own definition independently lacks any racial charge or pejorative meaning whatsoever without you adding it yourself. It’s almost as if context matters.

                • Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de
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                  1 year ago

                  I’m not really interested in the debate about brigading, but more on the data.

                  Can this just be retrieved via an API?

                  • midnight@lemmy.one
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                    I’m not sure if anyone is exposing an API for this. I’m pulling it directly from the database on an instance I have access to. At first I was worried it wasn’t accurate for hexbear because it’s a much older instance, but they didn’t start federating until very recently so it’s close enough.

    • Sasuke [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      sicko-biker NEW POSTER REPORTING FOR DUTY!

      do you ‘‘different-opinion-havers’’ also take shifts whenever there’s a racist term to defend?

    • inasaba@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      They’re not the only ones calling y’all out. Stop defending using racist terms.

      • midnight@lemmy.one
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        1 year ago

        Y’all need to learn to understand context. Someone born in 1988 with 88 tattooed on them is not inherently racist. Someone with 88 tattooed right under their swastika tat is racist.

        I don’t have time to run every term through the book of hidden meanings for racists that you people seem to have. It’s not racist in this context and the only ones trying to make it that way are those like you. Let it die.

          • midnight@lemmy.one
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            1 year ago

            Last I checked unixporn isn’t the car community. It’s literally a different context. There’s zero pejorative tones. It’s literally being used with pride, not hate or disdain.

      • midnight@lemmy.one
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        1 year ago

        Ooh shift change. Why do you lot latch onto a rehtorical question so hard? Is your victim complex really that strong? I simply pointed out that a lot of hexbear users are piling onto those that disagree with the OP and you’re proving my my point. You detach from the discussion and start going after the person almost every time.

        Btw you should really share notes, one of your comrades already tried to say I didn’t understand how federation works and you’re both wrong. Keep trying though 🥱

        • HuntressHimbo@lemm.ee
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          Perhaps you should click my profile before talking out of your ass. I am a lemm.ee user that explicitly supported defederating Hexbear in our meta thread on it. I’m not super fond of how they participate generally, but they are quite right about this one.

            • HuntressHimbo@lemm.ee
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              It showed up as you replying to me talking about shift change at hexbear so idk what you want from me man. You can pretend I am a hexbear that inexplicably posted about wanting to defed them days ago just so I could gotcha someone, but I’m just a Linux guy who would rather we didn’t use racist terms.

              • midnight@lemmy.one
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                The shift change comment was to a hexbear user, as the screenshot shows. For what it’s worth I had to go to the hexbear instance to see the full thread, your reply was coming up with no way for me to view context so I wasn’t sure if I actually fucked up or what happened. We can blame Lemmy growing pains I suppose.

                I’m also just a Linux guy getting by. But I reject the notion that a term considered racist in one context continues to be so outside of that context, terms that only exist in a racist context (n word) not withstanding. All of the times I’ve seen rice used to describe a person’s DE changes has always been a point of pride and not pejorative. This one’s ripe to defang and the people interested in perpetuating it as racist are largely hexbear users and some stragglers that align with them on this point.

                That said I don’t care if the term changes or not, but the apparent brigading and piling on centered around hexbear users masquerading as “omg we’re just so popular” is laughable.