this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2023
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Unixporn

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Unixporn

Submit screenshots of all your *NIX desktops, themes, and nifty configurations, or submit anything else that will make themers happy. Maybe a server running on an Amiga, or a Thinkpad signed by Bjarne Stroustrup? Show the world how pretty your computer can be!

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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.

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[–] QuietCupcake@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago (15 children)

Look ma, another one! Do you all take shifts on duty watching this thread?

This is my only comment in this thread. I clicked on this post because it showed up in my feed, simple as. Everyone who talks about hexbear brigading, piling on, or "taking shifts" doesn't understand how federation works. Hexbear has been a highly active website with a large userbase for years now, so I don't know what you would you expect to happen when a large discussion-based website shows content... the people on that website are going to discuss that content.

meanings can change over time. If it can start being used racially at one point it can surely stop at another.

This is true. But the group of people who get to decide whether or not something is racist is the group that is the target of that racism. White people don't get to decide the n-word is no longer racist. Hetero people don't get to decide the 3-letter f-word isn't homophobic. And no individual gets to decide because it's a cultural issue. Obviously meanings of words change and evolve, but they do so organically, and trying to force a racist term into regular usage and then say "it's not racist anymore because I wasn't intending to use it that way" is itself some really racist shit.

[–] midnight@lemmy.one 0 points 1 year ago (14 children)

Everyone who talks about hexbear brigading, piling on, or "taking shifts" doesn't understand how federation works.

Just because there are some users that stumble upon content semi-organically doesn't mean brigading and piling on isn't happening. I would hope you guys aren't actually taking shifts. Hello hyperbole. And none of that indicates someone doesn't understand how federation works, are you sure you understand how it works?

the group of people who get to decide whether or not something is racist is the group that is the target of that racism

They're also the group that gets to decide if they're offended/if something qualifies as racist toward them. You'll notice OP never indicated if they were part of this group, and by them recently learning the roots of the term as it relates to the car scene I'd guess they're not. Hello virtue signaling.

Hetero people don’t get to decide the 3-letter f-word isn’t homophobic

When it relates to homosexuality, I agree. When in another context, like.. oh say British slang, it's not at all. Context matters, that's the whole point here.

trying to force a racist term into regular usage ... is itself some really racist shit

I'm not going to concede your assertion that ricing in this context is racist. Nobody is forcing anything, ricing in this context has been a non racial term for as long as I've seen it used to describe customizing DEs. This is what something changing organically looks like. Unless you can point me to a source showing the term as it relates to linux was intentionally used to try to dull the racist origins in the car world you can go sit with the other hexbear virtue signalers in this post.

[–] ProfessorOwl_PhD@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Yes, there must be brigading going on, it's not like there's some sort of "front page" for federated instances that just anyone can browse, where active discussions like this would be promoted over less active content.

[–] midnight@lemmy.one 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

🥱 read your shift change notes. The line you're taking has already been quashed.

[–] ProfessorOwl_PhD@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Been quashed? You're claiming that users could only semi-organically stumble upon this post, when your continual engagement has kept it at a healthy position in the active feed for the past 2 days. If it weren't for your insistence on being racist none of us would have seen the post at all.

[–] midnight@lemmy.one 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Right, I forgot you fools lack reading comprehension skills and the ability to recognize nuance.

I didn't say there was brigading going on, your comrade brought that up. I simply said just because some users were arriving organically doesn't mean brigading is out of the question. The original point, which continues to be evident, is that there are a ton of hexbear users piling on to anyone that doesn't fall in line with OP. You all seem to conveniently ignore that and straw man into bringing up brigading and hurling insults. You prove my point every time a new one engages. Every. Time.

The only remotely racist users I've seen here are, unsurprisingly, hexbear users. You're the main ones attempting to nurture a term in a different context to try to get a completely different community to use your preferred racist definition. If you truly were anti-racist I would have expected celebration of the death of a racist term in the car community by way of the unixporn community using it with pride to show off their DEs.

Instead you cling for dear life onto your racist definition like conservatives do to the fucking electoral college and FPTP. It's really telling.

Edit: I went ahead and queried the lemmy database from a federated instance I have access to.

These are the top 3 instances commenting in this specific post at the time of writing (2023-08-25 08:02 UTC):

instance   | count
-------------+-------
hexbear.net |   205
lemmy.ml    |   106
lemm.ee     |    61

These are the top 3 instances and their comment counts on any post in lemmy.ml/c/unixporn this month at the time of writing:

domain    | count
-------------+-------
lemmy.ml    |   210
hexbear.net |   210
lemm.ee     |   100

You're reading that right, hexbear has a whopping FIVE comments in this community that are not part of this post.

For the curious, those 5 comments at the time of writing are:

One of which is especially hilarious as we see a hexbear user that's been railing on people in this post using the very term they're condemning here. Strong convictions? Perhaps bandwagoning the hexbear teet? Who knows. Definitely not suspicious 🙄

[–] ProfessorOwl_PhD@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago

"I didn't say there's any brigading going on, I just said there's some brigading going on - look, this incredibly popular post has more engagement than any of our other posts!"

The absolute brazen dishonesty you're engaging in the whole way through this thread is disgusting, and why you get piled on to. The fact is that you're pretending a racist term isn't racist (in the same way as calling stealing "jewing" isn't racist, I suppose (just to make sure you understand, it's very racist)), and your only real argument is "all the hexbears are piling in and being mean :(", not some justification for why taking a racist term for improving the look of a car without improving its performance isn't racist when you apply the exact same term, without altering the concept in any way, to computers.

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