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

  • inzen@lemmy.world
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    6 hours ago

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

  • sntx@lemm.ee
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    6 hours ago

    Can’t people refer to it as their personalized setups? Or is that too hard to write?

    • boonhet@lemm.ee
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      1 hour ago

      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.

    • Omega_Jimes@lemmy.ca
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      6 hours ago

      Yeah but that’s missing the flair required by people who spend their evenings adjusting the radial blur on the window borders.

      • NorthWestWind@lemmy.world
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        1 hour ago

        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.

  • mvirts@lemmy.world
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    6 hours 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

  • ExtremeDullard@lemmy.sdf.org
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    10 hours ago

    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.

    • data1701d (He/Him)@startrek.website
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      11 hours ago

      I thought about “decked out”, though then people would say “look at my deck”, potentially creating ambiguity between card games and spiffy desktops.

      • boonhet@lemm.ee
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        1 hour ago

        And extra ambiguity with people talking about polishing their deck while also pronouncing it as dick

        • data1701d (He/Him)@startrek.website
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          9 hours ago

          I’d like to interject for a moment. What you’re referring to as card games, is in fact, GNU/card games, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, GNU plus card games. 😉

  • kbal@fedia.io
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    20 hours ago

    Personally I’d put a higher priority on stamping out that use of “porn”.

    • thingsiplay@beehaw.org
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      20 hours ago

      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…