Sheesh, there sure are a lot of hexbear users here piling onto anybody with a different opinion

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:

• https://hexbear.net/comment/3722672
• https://hexbear.net/comment/3749006
• https://hexbear.net/comment/3722165
• https://hexbear.net/comment/3722091
• https://hexbear.net/comment/3790117

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 🙄

I don't understand where the problem arises exactly, there is no racist intent in its usage here, it's just a word, it's an empty container and we fill it with meaning. In this context it just means "customization", sure it's not a completely made up term and its origin is lowkey racist, but, as you stated yourself, not many know at all of that connotation, they go on to use it despite never meaning to use bad language on purpose, because it has simply acquired a different meaning, it was just the lingo they happened to find in the community.
There's plenty of words that had historically been bad and then became good, same the other way around. I believe that's the case here as well.

Even so, if an alternative word is proposed and favored, even just plain "customization" (which I feel would be better than replacing it with a lingo word, as it would make it easier for newcomers to understand what is being talked about more easily), I wouldn't be opposed, the main thing is to be able to convey the meaning, that's what that matters most in the end

For the sake of the American asian diaspora minorities again?

This reminds me of attacking those girls for wearing a kimono or cheongsam to a prom. The Japanese and Chinese living in Japan and China certainly don't have an issue. It's the Japanese/Chinese American minority community who has built their identity around it, and feels threatened by the use of their traditional clothing. Fine, the prom is in America, it's an American problem in an American space, the local diaspora have a say there.

Unixporn on lemmy.ml isn't American(or any one country) though, clearly there are a variety of people from every corner of the globe here. This place is positively cosmopolitan. I don't see a reason why the "rice" term still has to be protected despite being a global platform. Just like it's fine for any tourist to rent a kimono in Japan, it should be fine to use rice as a term here. Unless this platform were to officially become Amerian(or any other country like Fedd.it etc), this problem shouldn't exist. I'm an rice eating asian myself, I'll be glad if people were to associate rice with customization.

The Asian American community should keep in mind that the internet isn't always an American space by default. I don't think they should be gatekeeping everything Asian on a global platform.

Discussions like this always bring me back to one thing...can a word itself be racist? Is it racist to use a word if it's not being said with racist intent? It's reminiscent of the gimp debacle...if a words use isn't intended to offend it's honestly beyond me how anyone could find it offensive. Are we supposed to ban every single word that has the slightest history of being used in an offensive fashion? Feel like we'd have a really long list if we did that.