From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@yahoo.com)
Date: Sat Jul 19 2003 - 21:42:20 MDT
--- "Terry W. Colvin" <fortean1@mindspring.com> wrote:
> At 4:59 pm -0700 18/7/2003, Terry W. Colvin wrote:
> >< http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,111192,00.asp >
> >
> >Spam takes its name from a Monty Python skit about a restaurant that
> served
> >the stuff and the Vikings who ate there while chanting the word
> "spam" over
> >and over. According to Internet lore, the first spam attack took
> place in 1985
> >inside a multiuser game. Some wannabe Viking sent the message "spam
> spam spam"
> >(and so on) to every player on the system until he got booted. After
> that, the
> >term was applied to mass advertisements posted to online discussion
> groups and
> >then to unwanted bulk e-mail--all to the continuing dismay of the
> Hormel Foods
> >Corporation.
> >
> >Editor's Note:
> >Spam is nearly 20 years old...?
>
> Spam is more than a century old! Check out _Inventing the Victorians_
>
> by Matthew Sweet for an account of the Victorian dentists who sent
> out reams of unsolicited ads via telegram, causing outraged letters
> to The Times.
>
> Very highly recommended book for this and much more; also includes
> the line "Dante Gabriel Rossetti found him an excellent source of
> wombats". You can't ask for much more than that.
This is a common story about the origins of spam.
I distinctly recall, though, in 1981, using my account on Dartmouth's
Kiewit network (part of ARPANET), that since use of profanity was
against acceptable use policies, people commonly said "the spam hit the
fan today" whenever they meant "the shit hit the fan today", and other
variations of use. Since the term describes how throwing shit in a
running fan will tend to get shit on everybody and everything in the
room, exactly as spam email does, it became the commonly used term.
Mailing or messaging someone or a group forum (and thus wasting their
bandwidth and timeshare) with worthless and/or irrelevant shit (which
could only be described online as 'spam' due to AUP) was a major no-no.
This is an alternative story about the origins of the term which I can
personally corroborate, though it contradicts the claims of my many
Monty Python fan friends. I would suggest that the use of the Monty
Python singing Vikings became attached the same way Godwin got his name
attached to a rule of social ettiquette that preexisted his claim to fame.
=====
Mike Lorrey
"Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils."
- Gen. John Stark
Blog: Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com
Flight sims: http://www.x-plane.org/users/greendragon/
Pro-tech freedom discussion:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/exi-freedom
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