Squidding: Hanging Out on the Internet Waaaaay Too Much in the Nineties

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, I’m Michelle. I’m calling from Peoria, Illinois, on the behalf of my best friend, Liz Barton, with a question.

Okay, well, welcome to the show.

Well, I had a question about a slang term that was popular when we were going to college at Bradley University in Illinois in the early 90s. We had a term, it was squidding, or to squid, and it referred to computer use akin to what would now be social media. It was really before social media was a thing. But it referred to basically email, Usenet, chat boards, things that were nonproductive, kind of just computing for entertainment. And we were never sure if this was a slang term that was unique to where we were or where it came from or if it had broader usage.

So paint the picture for us. This is Bradley University, and that’s there in Peoria?

Yes. Bradley University is a medium-sized private school in Peoria, Illinois, and we would have been attending from 1992 to 1996.

Squidding, so S-Q-U-I-D, like the sea creature with the tentacles.

Exactly, the cephalopod, so sea creature with tentacles, and we always thought that might have something to do with it, but we weren’t sure. And we also weren’t sure if this was a term of art where we were or if it had any broader use.

You know what? I think it’s just a Bradley University thing. I really do. And don’t let that take away anything from it because I love it. Because when the Internet was new at all of these places around the country, everybody came up with their own terms until everything settled down, whether it was at a business or a school or even in people’s homes, all this new language came out. And there was all this new language until everyone kind of agreed what was going to be what, what we were going to call these things.

So squidding may have stopped at Bradley University, but fortune could have gone differently and squidding might have become the term that we all use. It just could have happened. But from about 1990 to 1996, squid and squidding show up in the student newspaper and the student yearbook, and they confirm your memory. And they refer definitely to spending a lot of time in the computer lab or using email or just being on the computer.

Well, that is fantastic to know. We have wondered for roughly 30 years.

For 30 years.

Wow.

Wow.

But off and on, you know, the thought has come up in the term. And I kind of wish it had taken off broader than it did because the tentacle aspect of it seems evocative to me.

It sure does. I’m thinking of how my devices sort of reach out and grab me and keep me scrolling. The reason I like what you’re saying about squid is because the web metaphor in 1990 when squid first appears in print at Bradley University, well, the web itself didn’t exist yet. And so we’re talking internet pre-web. We’re talking IRC, Usenet, profiles attached to FTP accounts, that sort of stuff, maybe even Gopher. And so people might be thinking of a squid with arms as a metaphor for all these systems instead of a web as a metaphor for all these systems.

Additionally, there was a lot of early software that was made. And I’m just wondering if there was some collection of bright people at Bradley who had made some soft custom software that they called Squid or something similar. And maybe that’s where the term caught on there. I haven’t been able to find any evidence of that, but I wouldn’t be surprised to find if there was a bit of software, the custom software that you could install to put the settings on your personal computer, whatever you needed to connect to the local internet that was called Squid.

I would not be surprised. There was so much out there, and often I did take animal names, like a gopher.

Or dogpile.

Or dogpile.

That was later, but yeah. In the 1996 issue of the Bradley Scout, and that was the student newspaper, someone credited as summer has this big piece where they write, you may be a squid if, it says, lines like, if you’ve ever skipped class, a meal, a date, or a night’s sleep to do something online. Or if you’ve ever taken a class solely to get an email account. And that cracked me up because that was a thing. Like you didn’t automatically get an email account in the early days.

No. Sometimes you only got it if you took a comp sci class.

That is really funny. And that also confirms my memory that it was used as a noun and a verb.

Yeah. Just a general description of what you were up to.

Well, Michelle, I hope this is a good memory for you. And I’m glad that we were able to help.

Thank you very much. I appreciate it.

It was our pleasure. Take care, please.

Thank you.

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