Wow! That’s cool to know! Yeah my understanding is ricing, among people my age (in their 20s), is to really customise a desktop, and it always seems to be a tiling window manager, which I’ve tried a few times, but never lasted more than a couple months on.
I really appreciate your detailed response on this @vkareh and it makes sense that the point of ricing is to see how much you can tweak a UI, but for purely aesthetic reasons not for usability. Maybe I misunderstood the point in the video I watched and the Reddit posts I have seen with decked-out screenshots.
That sounds cool. I made a couple Unity-inspired Ubuntu MATE rices, my latest one I posted here: My Ubuntu MATE Screenshot - with a hint of Disco. I found that I really like the Unity layout and use the Ubuntu Unity flavour now, but I have MATE installed on my secondary machine on NixOS (my friend recommended me this so I figured I’d try it out). I’ll have to try “ricing” it out when I have some time. 
Although I use Unity now, I really like this forum and seeing what goes on in Ubuntu MATE based on using it for the better part of the year, so hopefully no one minds me sticking around. Also, would screenshots of desktops created in MATE but not Ubuntu MATE be acceptable to post?
Jaymo