the original ricers were Japanese cars (early 80s), then from there rice came to mean cars with Race Inspired CosmeticEnhancements (90s) + from there we get rice’d out desktops (which is new to me but whatever).
I am not as sure a rice desktop png is racist but if you feel like the term is opressing you or holding you back, could you consider opportunities to reclaim what is a good word (who doesn’t like rice?) and use it for positive cultural elements (modded desktops)? I don’t want to cede a good word to uninformed peoples from 40 yrs ago…history is too short to let them win!
evidence points to “Race Inspired Cosmetic Enhancements” being a “backronym”, an abbreviation that was invented after the word was already in usage – have you ever heard anyone calling an american or european car a “rice”?
anyway, happily the c/unixporn moderator didn’t agree that it’s possible for people not targeted by a racist term to reclaim it for themselves, and that it’s not the responsibility of folks pointing out a word’s bigoted history to find an alternative, and racist terminology is now banned 😌
![[Sway] another nord rice](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/15dc57a4-305c-48b2-8e63-54f585578c7e.png){kind=link}
There’s nothing inherently racist about using the term in the context of customizing a desktop.
this is the kind of thinking that gave us names like “pcmasterrace”. words mean things, their origins matter
the original ricers were Japanese cars (early 80s), then from there rice came to mean cars with Race Inspired Cosmetic Enhancements (90s) + from there we get rice’d out desktops (which is new to me but whatever).
I am not as sure a rice desktop png is racist but if you feel like the term is opressing you or holding you back, could you consider opportunities to reclaim what is a good word (who doesn’t like rice?) and use it for positive cultural elements (modded desktops)? I don’t want to cede a good word to uninformed peoples from 40 yrs ago…history is too short to let them win!
evidence points to “Race Inspired Cosmetic Enhancements” being a “backronym”, an abbreviation that was invented after the word was already in usage – have you ever heard anyone calling an american or european car a “rice”?
anyway, happily the c/unixporn moderator didn’t agree that it’s possible for people not targeted by a racist term to reclaim it for themselves, and that it’s not the responsibility of folks pointing out a word’s bigoted history to find an alternative, and racist terminology is now banned 😌
sadly of course “pcmasterrace” went the other direction, polling a bunch of self-selected edgelords about the name went about as expected
Yes - today, rice refers to anything heavily customized for cosmetics.