[UK]

1. A lower form of life found on talker systems and MUDs. The spod has few friends in RL and uses talkers instead, finding communication easier and preferable over the net. He has all the negative traits of the computer geek without having any interest in computers per se. Lacking any knowledge of or interest in how networks work, and considering his access a God-given right, he is a major irritant to sysadmins, clogging up lines in order to reach new MUDs, following passed-on instructions on how to sneak his way onto Internet (“Wow! It's in America!”) and complaining when he is not allowed to use busy routes. A true spod will start any conversation with “Are you male or female?” (and follow it up with “Got any good numbers/IDs/passwords?”) and will not talk to someone physically present in the same terminal room until they log onto the same machine that he is using and enter talk mode. 2. An experienced talker user. As with the defiant adoption of the term geek in the mid-1990s by people who would previously have been stigmatized by it, the term “spod” is now used as a mark of distinction by talker users who've accumulated a large amount of login time. Such spods tend to be very knowledgeable about talkers and talker coding, as well as more general hacker activites. An unusually high proportion of spods work in the ISP sector, a profession which allows for lengthy periods of login time and for under-the-desk servers, or “spodhosts”, upon which talker systems are hosted. Compare newbie, tourist, weenie, twink, terminal junkie, warez d00dz.

2. A backronym for “Sole Purpose, Obtain a Degree”; according to some self-described spods, this term is used by indifferent students to condemn their harder-working fellows.

3. [Glasgow University] An otherwise competent hacker who spends way too much time on talker systems.

4. [obs.] An ordinary person; a random. This is the meaning with which the term was coined, but the inventor informs us he has himself accepted sense 1.