Why I Personally Hate The Term "Rice" #BlogPost

Disclaimer: I know a lot of people will probably disagree with me. This is solely my opinion. Whether you agree with it or not is up to you. I’m not trying to convince everyone single-handedly, but I am just putting my opinion out there, some food for thought.

If you’ve been in the car community long enough, you’ll come to realize that a lot of people like to throw around the word, “rice.” Why is that? They generally use it as a way of describing cars primarily with aesthetic modifications (usually poorly done or outright hideous) and little to no performance modifications.

Then you have the people who are not fully aware of the word’s usage. They begin calling mostly everything rice, whether it’s performance cars that actually need crazy looking aesthetics, cars that just don’t look good to them, and everything in between. This is where things get a bit hairy.

I despise the word “rice” when describing cars because even though a lot of people generally understand what it is and where to draw the line, it will always get out of control. Some have come up with acronyms for rice, such as “Race Inspired Cosmetic Enhancements” and countless more I can’t even remember. Again, I don’t agree with this because the understanding of it most likely varies between person to person.

Take a look at the picture below:

Some people will look at the first car, a Time Attack race car, and simply dismiss it as rice because of the massive wing in the front. What they don’t realize is that the front spoiler actually does have performance value and is not there just because (This FWD tC actually beat quite a few times and records, even against AWD competitors, if I recall correctly). The car on the right hand side, however, is not exactly the same case.

Rice has many variations and has so many interchangeable definitions between people it is hard to actually define a solid line between what is and isn’t. Another example; take a look at this car below. Would you call it rice?

In a simple Google image search of “riced out cars,” this EG comes up. It looks very clean and mad to me, but for someone else, it could be “rice,” potentially due to the color scheme or massive wheels/rims. I personally believe that if a car, no matter how aesthetically crazy it is, looks clean overall, it is fine by me. Then you have the cars with the cardboard spoilers or the weird looking custom taillights, crazy designs, a massive amount of stickers, and the list goes on.

Take this car for example as well. I remember someone posted a gif of this on the site too and some people called it rice because of the massive spoiler and NFSU2-era bodykit. I personally liked the car actually (other than being a massive Honda fan I am) because despite those things, the car still looked very clean to me (good bodywork, nothing done poorly, color scheme is great, etc.).

Vagueness and variability is why I do not like the term “rice.” It’s debatable for many cars and a lot of people just don’t know how to use it properly (i.e. people who think every JDM car is “rice”). A lot of the time, it gets annoying when the community is “Oh, rice this, rice that, blah blah blah.” Instead of giving this specific group of cars a name, just say something along the lines of “I don’t like how that car looks” and move on with your life. It removes the categorization of “rice” (which is extremely touchy for people since categories absolutely have to have definite requirements, right? It’s like categorizing music into genres to me, where people get butthurt and touchy about everything) and people can’t really argue with your opinion if you don’t change your mind.

Another bottom line, deal breaker sort of thing for me is that if a car has the performance to back up its ugly appearance, it’s fine by me.

By the way…

Why do we have to demean the heavenly glory known as rice by associating it with ugly cars? Rice tastes great and it complements a lot of other foods in countless dishes.

Also, this is not specifically for April Fools Day; it’s actually something I’ve been wanting to write for a while now XD

Anyway, /endrant