And now for something completely different
Spam

And now for something completely different

Back in 1970, a year after the first Internet communication was sent, the sketch comedy group Monty Python produced it’s now famous Spam sketch.

In the 1980s, bulletin board system services (BBSs) were developed by hobbyists to facilitate communication between people with common, and often obscure, interests.

Some of these group started Multi-User Dungeons (MUDs) to play an online version of Dungeons & Dragons.

It was in these forums that the spam phenomenon began. No one is sure who the first person who used it was, but someone created a keyboard macro program to type the words SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM repeatedly every few seconds to imitate the Monty Python sketch.

This method became a popular way of shutting new members out of a conversation and making them leave a chat environment so the original members could carry on their conversations uninterrupted.

But it was also used to intentionally disrupt certain boards. Star Wars fans often entered Star Trek BBSs specifically to “spam” them.

Soon there were other macro created that dumped huge amounts of text on the boards.

These macros were all referred to as “spam” within the community.

As the Internet grew and email solicitations became a common phenomenon, it was an easy leap for BBS “spam” to lend its name to email “spam”.

Today, it’s a catch-all term for anything that qualifies as “stupid pointless annoying messages”.

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