[Ads-l] Antedatings and Etymological Speculation Concerning "Spam" (Computing)

[ADSGarson O'Toole]

Brad Templeton investigated the origin of the term "spam" (and
"spamming") and he asserted that:

[Begin excerpt]
My research shows the term goes back to the late 1980s and the "MUD" community.
[End excerpt]

https://www.templetons.com/brad/spamterm.html

I have not examined Templeton's article carefully enough to try to
find the earliest solidly dated material.

Templeton does supply the following link to a discussion on September
26, 1990 in the newsgroup rec.games.mud

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=lang_en|lang_fr&threadm=1990Sep27.133112.11308%40decuac.dec.com&rnum=1&prev=/&frame=on

Here is a link to a message on September 26, 1990 that mentions the
Monty Python skit when explaining the origin of "spam". However, the
semantics have clearly shifted over time.

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/rec.games.mud/fUxvPNpEZEA/2f7jN93k3cEJ

In the MUD domain "spam" referred to sending a large number of
messages to the server or person.

[Begin excerpt]
The verb "to spam" would be to send lots and lots of useless
information (in particular, the word "spam") over and over to someone,
thus scrolling their screen with lots and lots of lines of "spam spam
spam spam spam spam" etc. It has been generalized to mean sending lots
of crap to servers as well as people you want to annoy the hell out
of.
[End excerpt]

Garson

On Fri, Oct 4, 2019 at 9:32 PM Shapiro, Fred <fred.shapiro at yale.edu> wrote:
>
> Here are some minor antedatings of the OED's first uses of "spam" (computing) and "spammer":
>
> spam, v. (OED 1994 [25 July])  1994 _Manhattan_ (Kan.) _Mercury_ 8 May 52/4 (Newspapers.com)  The cost to spam an advertisement in thousands of news groups, where it is potentially read by hundreds of thousands of computer users, is typically less than $50.
>
> spammer (OED 1994 [25 July])  1994 _San Francisco Examiner_ 25 May 32/1 (Newspapers.com)  Some Netheads responded to the lawyers' ad barrage with guerilla tactics, "flaming" the spammers.
>
> The etymology of this use of the word "spam" is almost universally said to derive from a Monty Python skit in which the food-name "Spam" is repeated incessantly.  Am I the only one who questions this derivation?  To me the semantic link between mass promulgation of advertisements and massive repetition of a word. although plausible, is somewhat weak.  The South Bend Tribune, 12 May 1994, said that "Among network veterans, such random posting is called 'spamming' -- a term derived from a brand of pink, canned meat that splatters messily when hurled."  The OED's first citation for the verb "spam," dated 25 July 1994, says the term was "meant to evoke the effect of dropping a can of Spam into a fan filling the surrounding space with meat" (this brings to mind the idiom "the shit hits the fan").  In neither of these two articles is there any mention of Monty Python.  I suggest that "Spam splattering messily when hurled" may be a more likely etymological explanation of the computing meaning of "spam" than the Python skit.
>
> Fred Shapiro
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
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