What does camping on foods mean in American English?

I saw two guys joking around, the first one had had a Cheetos bag. Here is the conversation that took place between them:

First guy: Do you wanna little snack?

Second guy: Yeh, actually, it's one of my favorites. (He took the whole bag.)

(The guys kept chatting for a while ... and the second guy was enjoying the Cheetos in the meantime).

First guy: I think you're probably High, (laughing ...) you just camping on the Cheetos.

Second guy: (Laughing out loud) Hahaha.

I know what camping is, and based on that I would guess camping on foods means to keep eating while you're allowed for tasting only? Am I correct?


As commenters have noted, camping is used in a number of contexts to mean something related to staying put.

The best clue in this dialogue to which meaning is right in this context is, "I think you're high."

Recreational drug use is often ritualized and has specialized vocabulary. Often, when marijuana is smoked recreationally, it will be shared by a number of smokers. Each participant is expected to inhale once from the pipe, joint, bong, etc, and then pass the marijuana to the next participant. If a participant does not pass the pipe/joint/etc. quickly after having smoked from it, he or she would be said to "be camping on the pipe/joint/etc."

The analogy (made almost explicit by the statement, "I think you're high") to the Cheetos is clear. The unspoken expectation is that each person should take a little handful of Cheetos and then pass the bag to the next person. Not doing so, holding onto the bag for an extended period and taking multiple handfuls would be analogous to holding onto the joint and taking multiple hits, or "camping."


Camping comes from online role-playing games (my first exposure to the term was in Everquest) where Player-Characters (PC) would find a spawn location for a particular creature type they were hunting and then virtually camp at that location to kill the create as soon as it spawned.

This expanded into usage in First Person Shooter (FPS) games where when player characters (PCs) are killed they respawn at a predetermined location. Enemy players would then "camp" i.e.: wait at this location until the PC re-spawned; so that they could kill them easily while they were regaining their senses and before they had situational awareness.

Expanding to the Cheetos, the person holding the bag was "camping" the Cheetos - essentially hovering over the bag to be the first person to reach in each time.