Spam, Spam, Lovely Spam!

There is absolutely nothing interesting about Spam. As the name implies, it’s completely bereft of any nutritious (read: substantive) value. In a strictly definitional sense, Spam is “flooding the internet with many copies of the same message, in an attempt to force the message on people who would not otherwise want to receive it.” Most people are well-acquainted with Spam in the form of e-mails advertising prescription medications, penis enlargement, and a whole litany of products whose legitimacy is, at best, questionable. Without exception, Spam is pretty vapid stuff. In fact, the most interesting aspect of Spam is probably the term’s etymological history.
It’s frequently assumed that people began referring to mass-distributed junk e-mails as Spam as a simple homage to the Hormel lunchmeat, the intimation being that you essentially get nothing of value from either. Brad Templeton of ClariNet.org begs to differ. According to his detailed history of the origin of “Spam” in the internet vernacular, the term is in fact a nod to a Monty Python sketch involving several Vikings singing about Spam (really they just repeat the word over and over) until they’re told to desist. Such an explanation makes a lot of sense: both the song and internet Spam are obnoxiously repetitious.
Templeton also gives in interesting and seemingly accurate account of the communities and incidents that made Spam a household colloquialism. Spam was originally coined amongst so-called “MUDders” (users of multi-user dungeon programs, essentially early incarnations of programs like Second Life) who used it to describe a) flooding servers with data or b) bothering others by typing nonsense into a chat.
Of course, MUDders didn’t comprise a sizable portion of the general populace, and it took the actions of two lawyers and a rogue programmer to establish “Spam” as a staple of the American lexicon. According to Wikipedia, a husband-and-wife team of lawyers–Lawrence Canter and Martha Siegel–won their place in history as the first commercial Usenet spammers when they contracted a programmer to write a Perl script which distributed an advertisement for their services in an upcoming “Green card lottery” to upwards of 6,000 Usenet discussion groups. During the subsequent outcry from users, the advertisement was commonly referred to as “Spam,” and the term has continued to proliferate ever since.

Works Cited

Templeton, Brad. Origin of the Term “Spam” to Mean Net Abuse. Retrieved February 3, 2008 from the Brad Templeton Home Page.
http://www.templetons.com/brad/spamterm.html

Unknown Author. Canter & Siegel. Retrieved February 3, 2008 from Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canter_&_Siegel

Mueller, S.H. Information About Spam. Retrieved February 3, 2008 from
http://spam.abuse.net