Slashdot Mirror
Brad Templeton On Spam's Silver Anniversary
Brad Templeton writes "This Saturday marks the 25th anniversary of the first spam I was able to find, and one month ago was the 10th anniversary of the first time a USENET posting was called a spam and the birth of the term (at least beyond mudds)." Templeton was also cited in the American Scientist article featured last Sunday.
Whoops! It looks like 1937 is a more accurate date for the first spam. I should have checked the "Spam Spanning The Decades" link first....
But, that still makes spam 66 years old...that's a lot more than 25...
The anti-salmon
Not so much a dup as a mis-timing. I had been preparing an article about the 25th anniversary for my site and slashdot for a while as we came up to the date. The article was ready and somebody else wrote an article with some of that history, based in part on mine, which was already on the web, and it was put up not knowing my article was getting ready for release. However, there is enough new stuff in my history to have justified putting 'em both up.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
Somehow, somewhere along the way, the term was applied to unsolicited commercial email, and the original meaning was more or less forgotten. Besides, the practice of flooding peoples' inboxes doesn't really happen that way very much anymore.
I can see the fnords!
First, nothing begins if not opening
Worth a read imho.
"If you are going through hell, keep going." - Winston Churchill
The Green Card Lawyer spam was indeed was caused the term to really take off, but it was in use before their posting. People pay attention to Canter & Siegel (instead of giving them the footnote of obscurity they deserve) because they had such bravado about it. Other early massive posters, including jj@portal.com and the Jesus is coming poster had turned tail and run when they faced criticism. C&S met it head on, and that got people really angry.
And thus the term really grew. But theirs was not the first spam, not the first to be called a spam, not even the first big spam. It was the first for a new level of anger.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
I'm a unix geek like the rest of you.
The mudder's use is not recorded, of course, as far as I have found. Simply reports from mudders say that when people started flooding a mud with text, and later objects, somebody called it spamming. From the Monty Python, because the vikings keep repeating the word over and over and over again.
I have conflicting stories on the first use, but without logs we may never know.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
> You still haven't answered my question. What does verbosity or a full screen have to do with salty canned meat?
Nothing, except that Monty Python's Flying Circus did a skit where a modern, normal-looking guy goes into a restaurant full of 10th C. Viking customers and a lady (played by a guy in drag) behind the counter. He asks for something to eat, I forget what. He's told that he can get "Spam, eggs and spam, or spam, spam, and spam." After some discussion that goes nowhere, the Vikings break out into a chant of "Spam! Spam! Spam! Spam-ity spam!" They repeat this chant over and over until it drowns out everything else going on in the scene.
The idea is that screen flooding becomes like the Vikings chanting "Spam." Nothing else goes on because nobody else can get a word in edgewise over the racket.
Just be sure to wear the gold uniform when you beam down -- you know what happens when you wear the red one.