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Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
stellarskylark@solarpunk.moe ("φ-52 "Skylark"") wrote:
Reminder, or maybe first time hearing about it for folks who didn't know, the term "ricing" to refer to theming a Linux desktop is rooted in racism.
The basic etymological chain is:
- Car tuner culture develops in America. Normal and interesting practice of taking consumer cars originally engineered for reliability and modifying them for racing performance.
- They also customize the look of the cars to make them more closely resemble racing vehicles.
- Most of the cars used for this purpose are Japanese imports (Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Subaru, Mitsubishi, Mazda)
- In a classic Extremely Clever (/s) moment, tuners said "haha the people who manufacture these cars eat a staple grain that billions of humans worldwide eat every day" and started calling their modded cars "rice burners" and the act of modding them "ricing".
- Someone, somewhere, starts using the word to refer to modifying the appearance of a Linux desktop, rather than a car.