How the Word SPAM came to mean Junk Message

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While some have suggested that this was because SPAM (as in the Hormel meat product) is sometimes satirized as “fake meat”, thus spam messages are “fake messages”, this potential origin, while plausible enough on the surface, turns out to be not correct at all.

Sources:

[TodayIFoundOut]

Now that you know why junk messages are called "SPAM" check out this video and find out Why “C” is the Default Hard Drive Letter in Many Computers:

[Saint_nobody]

Okay. This old episode makes me appreciative that Simon decided to grow a beard. 😆

[hankw]

Wow, I haven't heard the name TRS80 in a LONG time. That was Tandy/ Radio Shack's contribution to the computer market. In tech circles it was often referred to as the Trash-80.
Now I have a hankerin' for a spam, eggs, sausage & spam.
spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, ...

[madmissmim]

Now I have the Spam skit stuck in my head again. I blame you...

[pacman]

I had an email from Hormel in my spam bin once... there's a joke in there somewhere.

[brianartillery]

A friend of mine, who works at British Telecom's research centre, told me, ages ago, that 'Spam' was an acronym for 'Self Promoting Automatic Mail'.

[Isaac-iubx]

So interesting!! Imagine making such an influential skit..not that monty python isnt influential of course, but I never even knew they were connected.

[rubymimosa]

OMGosh! I remember spam on the TRS-80!! My father had used the term before I saw it there though referring to people doing it (spamming chain letter kind of stuff) on a university's internal forum

[thomasconrow]

TRS-80 was not a chat system; it was a microcomputer manufactured by and for Radio Shack. The system shown is a model 12.

[eben]

Great video, Simon! I've actually been wondering this for a while now.

[lynthornealder]

you know, I honestly didn't know this origin - I think I've heard a backronym for it that I thought was the real origin. But hearing you explain MUDs is... wow I feel old :-P

[beagleissleeping]

I'm so used to recent Simon I didn't recognize him in the thumbnail.😳🤣

[slade]

In high school (mid-80s), some classmates had a band called Spam. Hormel made some legal threats if I remember correctly, and they had to change the name.

[gyroh]

I really thought spam stood for Stupid Pointless Annoying Message. It stuck in my memory since middle school when I first learned of that word on an online game.

[bentoth]

Could you do the egg bacon spam and sausage without the spam then?

[BrianH]

In the 90's, I kept getting emails to buy SPAM cans.  I think someone was talking SPAM emails a little too far.

[mytimeistoday]

Where do you come up w/ these various topics?

[PatTurcotte-xejw]

And Spam in that song on Monty Python is referring back to that disgusting luncheon meat.

[jackdeath]

Geez! I can remember the term spam used in the early 70s when SPAM stood for *S* ource *P* rogram *A* ssembly *M* nemonics.

[StreakyBaconMan]

These days it'd be impossible to not be able to track down the origin of a word coined and spread online - I was actually very surprised that the first usage of the world online is undocumented now. I always thought of the internet as something you put data on and it stays there forever in one way or another.