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.
“f*ggot doesn’t mean gay people”
“tr*p doesn’t mean trans people”
“why can’t I nword if it’s in a hip-hop song, they use it”
“g*psy doesn’t refer to Romani, it’s just what you say”
“r*dskins is a traditional name for my football team it’s not racist!”
You get to join this long line of people talking absolute crap, desperately trying to avoid change because you’re incapable of self-reflection and admitting you’ve been blind to this mistake for so long. You will piss and whine and piss and whine about it until eventually accepting it, like all the others historically.
What if you adopt a new word instead of trying to rehabilitate a racist one? Are you able to learn and use new words? Or are you too stuck in your ways to realise that words have meaning beyond the only connotation you know about?
If only there was a far more popular word for MODifyING and customizing something, software especially.
