Quote:
Originally posted by ARiA
PS. anyone know why they call it spam instead of sardines or vienna sausage??  
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How did it come to mean bulk messages? The genesis of this meaning can be found in a Monty Python's Flying Circus sketch in which a customer in a restaurant asks what's on the menu. The waitress tells him, "Well, there's egg and bacon; egg, sausage, and bacon; egg and spam; egg, bacon, and spam; egg, bacon, sausage, spam; spam, bacon, sausage, and spam; spam, egg, spam, spam, bacon, and spam; spam, sausage, spam, spam, spam, bacon, spam, tomato, and spam; spam, spam, spam, egg, and spam" (and so on). Then a chorus of Vikings begins chanting "Spam, spam, spam, spam; lovely spam, wonderful spam." The first Internet use of the word originated in Internet chat rooms and on multiplayer Internet adventure games called MUDs (multiuser dungeons). According to Jennifer Smith, author of the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) list for the rec.games.mud newsgroup hierarchy, a few delinquents would "say" the same message again and again in a chat room, filling the screen in the process, and other people would call these messages "spam." It was just like the song in the Monty Python skit--senseless repetition. From flooding someone's screen with repeated words to flooding someone's mailbox or a newsgroup with repeated messages seemed to be a natural extension of the concept."
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