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gsa32 @lemmy.world

Is ricing racist? Drama ensures as Lemmings debate and Hexbear brigades yet another thread

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  • My biggest issue with discussions like this is how people insist that words can't change their meaning or leave their roots behind. How many people knew that "ricer" was racist though? Isn't that a good example of how a (potentially) racist term can leave behind its racist origins? Now, to be clear, I always thought "ricing" referred to tacky cars inspired by the Japanese modding community that were all visuals, no muscle, which means it could be considered mildly racist in that context. However it was my interpretation that they were called ricers because they look interesting but are white, cheap and bland underneath (still racist, but going in the other direction).

    How many people didn't think it had any racist origins whatsoever though? How many people thought it was something else? Why are we so hellbent on enforcing the racist, sexist, whateverist history of these terms? It's understandable when someone gets upset over a word that's regularly used within the context of an -ism (like the n-word), but if a word has become so disconnected from its original meaning that no one is getting offended by it, why in gods name are you trying to reassociate it with something offensive!? Let it stay dead. What the fuck is wrong with you? At that point, you're taking a term which lost its status as a slur, and turning it back into a slur. WHYYYY? The only reason I can imagine someone doing something like that is for they either A) want pity points, or B) you're wanting to revive it as a slur under the guise of "social awareness" so you can use it yourself.

    Edit: oh yeah, and obligatory "fuck hexbear". Quite honestly I wouldn't be surprised if they want more slurs to hurl because I get the feeling there are a lot of them that probably have exploding heads secondary accounts.

    Edit 2: There's also the fact that, from what I've seen, there's some disagreement on where the term originated from. One speculated origin is from "riceburner", which was a derogatory term for Asian cars before they became seen as being high-quality and highly dependable. Another, however, is that it's a portmanteau of "rich" and "racer", referring to someone who has a lot of money but little knowledge when it comes to what actually makes a modded car "good". Either way, it's been genericized to the point where it seems silly to get offended over it, as a "ricer" can be someone of any ethnicity.

    • People want to be offended by everything these days. It may have started as a good thing to minimise abuse and discrimination, but by this point that target has been vastly overshot and has become an issue of abuse in itself.

    • It's often less about the meaning of the word changing and more people not being aware of its connotations. They can remain offensive to certain populations who just don't comment on it due to the prevalence.

      With that said, my understanding has always been that ricer referred to the product rather than its owner. It seems strange seeing people use it when referring to PCs though.

      • I imagine the same kinds of people into car modding are also into modding other things. It probably isn't a huge overlap, but there are a lot of commonalities between the two. Additionally, a lot of Linux nerds also tend to be weebs and might have picked it up from Initial D or some other anime (never watched Initial D, but from the little I know about it, it'd make sense if the term appeared in it). The result is that it probably came from bleedover between the communities.

        • I drive a modded car (aftermarket turbo on a Scion FRS) and like my PC builds but I just find it a strange term to apply to computers. It'd be like referring to a muscle PC build. Just strange to me.

          • Yeah, I can see that. Though tbh I'd probably understand what you're referring to as I'd consider a muscle PC as being something like a workstation PC. Something with a crazy powerful CPU or GPU, but lacking in the other department because it's built with CPU or GPU heavy tasks in mind. Then, a kart PC would be something like an Arduino or Raspberry pi, and a drag PC would be something like an ASIC.

    • Fuck Hexbear for agreeing the word is racist and shouldn't be used going forward?

      • I get the feeling you completely ignored the point if my comment and likely aren't arguing in good faith, but fuck it, I'll bite:

        Nah, fuck hexbear for getting offended on the behalf of others. If I saw asian-americans consistently getting offended by it then I'd feel differently because sometimes when you're in a marginalized community you need a signal boost; but in this case most people don't know and/or don't care, including a lot of asian-americans.

        The context behind this view is that I'm a member of the LGBT community, and the number of times I've seen people get offended on our behalf regarding things we don't really care about is way too high, especially when it comes to members voluntarily using anti-lgbt slurs, either as an ironic statement or in an attempt to own them. Just because a word has a racist history doesn't mean it can't change.

        Additionally, fuck hexbear in general for being tankies and using the LGBT community as a shield (among other things, like "brigading" meta posts in other instances that have anything to do with them, despite their own instance admins telling them not to). I dunno if you missed the drama, but they decided to beef with the owners of Blahaj.zone and then tried to claim that hexbear was LGBT-friendly and that blahaj.zone members were basically suffering from Stockholm syndrome whenever anyone tried to criticize them.

        Iirc blahaj.zone's admins are both trans-women who created the instance to be an LGBT safe space.

        That incident alone severely damaged my opinion of hexbear. At first they were just annoying, but that made me hate them.

        • There's clearly a time and place to say fuck Hexbear, but them standing up for minority communities isn't it.

          You're of the opinion that people didn't know and so it's okay. But it's not, the second even one person explains, that's when you say shit my bad. I used to use terms a lot which people deemed offensive and I stopped when I learned better. There's places in America where they still think it's normal to use the n-word in reference to black people and that's never okay and never will be okay. We learn things and move forward.

          Personally, if I have a choice over this issue, I'm standing with the anti-racists rather than the racists who are demanding the right to use a slur.

      • No, just fuck Hexbear in general. Not having the worst possible take on every issue doesn't mean you don't suck ass.

32 comments