Spam? Does It Come From A Can?

quote Headface

I don't know, I find that hard to believe that something so commonly used originated from a Monty Mython skit. But I suppose its somewhat believable, maybe. But fom what it says, it doesn't really make much sense that it would pick up from that. But who knows, it may be right.

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ARMM -- first to be called spam.
In 1993, Richard Depew tried to make some changes in USENET. He advanced a somewhat controversial idea called retro-moderation, where newsgroups would be semi-moderated (that is to say, regulated so that not all postings would appear) through a moderator who canceled postings that broke the rules.

Moderated groups were common, but with those, each posting was pre-screened by the moderator. He suggested allowing a moderator to screen after the fact. Because this was new, and reminded people of censorship (since canceling the postings of others was normally a major faux pas), this was quite controversial. Depew got his own fan group, and both allies and detractors.

However, what really got people upset was March 31, 1993. He had been playing with some software to perform the retro-moderation task. His software, called ARMM, had a bug, and he ran it, and it ended up posting 200 messages in a row to news.admin.policy, the newsgroup where people discussed the running of the net.

It really ticked people off, and some people, knowing the term from MUDs, called it a spam. The very day ARMM was run, Joel Furr, as far as I can tell, was the first to call a spam a spam.

Depew himself shortly apologized for having done a spam, using the term himself. However, many would say that this wasn't a true spam, since it was an accident.

quote Headface

Seeing how there has been a recent surge of spam post in Loungin' and Intellectual Discussions, I have been wondering. Where does this term, 'spam' come from? I am aware of the meat in a can, but why are completely useless threads, and annoying junk email, called spam?

quote KFC_Or_Bust

What surge of spam?