spam (noun) [Word Notes]

Oct 6, 2026 · Summarized Nov 1, 2026

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Key takeaways

Spam means unsolicited, unwanted electronic messages sent indiscriminately to large numbers of people, and those messages may be either merely annoying or actively malicious.
Gary Thurek’s 1978 message to roughly 400 ARPANET prospects is presented as the first Internet unsolicited bulk-email campaign; despite immediate complaints, it reportedly generated $13 million in sales.
The popular claim that Spam stands for “scientifically processed animal matter” is described as apocryphal; Eater says the canned meat’s name means “spiced ham.”
The electronic use of “spam” likely developed in the 1980s MUD community, where users sometimes flooded others with repeated, useless text.
Andrew Plotkin connected MUD spam to the Monty Python sketch in which Vikings repeatedly sing “Spam,” giving the behavior its characteristic meaning of overwhelming someone with repetition.
Spam remains a systems and productivity problem even when it carries no malware, because filtering, processing, and disposing of unwanted messages consume employee and technical bandwidth.

Summary

“Spam” is more than unwanted email

The episode opens with the definition of spam: unsolicited, unwanted, and sometimes malicious electronic messages sent indiscriminately to many people. The example is straightforward—“The user deleted all the spam emails”—but the explanation emphasizes that spam is not merely an annoyance. Marketers may use it to advertise products, while threat actors use mass messages to distribute phishing links and malware. The episode also cites Proofpoint’s broader impact assessment. Receiving, processing, classifying, and disposing of spam and unwanted mail consumes both system bandwidth and employee bandwidth, creating a service-quality problem even when the messages are not malicious. The word therefore covers both the familiar nuisance of junk mail and a delivery method that can support large-scale cyberattacks.

Gary Thurek’s 1978 campaign made unsolicited bulk email notorious

The historical account traces the first Internet unsolicited bulk-email campaign to 1978. According to Brad Templeton’s writing on early Internet history, an aggressive DEC marketer named Gary Thurek sent a message to roughly 400 ARPANET prospects. Complaints reached Thurek’s boss immediately, and he never repeated the campaign, but the single “mistake” reportedly produced $13 million in sales. The episode says the phenomenon existed before it had the name spam. The name itself has two different histories. “Spam” was the name of a canned meat product introduced in 1937; although a popular myth expands it as “scientifically processed animal matter,” Eater says the real name means “spiced ham.” The episode does not claim that this food name directly explains the electronic usage, only that the Internet community later adopted it for a different kind of unwanted repetition.

MUDs and Monty Python supplied the modern meaning

The episode says the electronic use of spam probably emerged in the 1980s among the MUD community. MUDs—multi-user dungeons—were usually text-based, real-time shared environments where users could chat, move around, and interact with places and objects. Their descendants include EverQuest, World of Warcraft, and The Sims Online. Even in those early virtual worlds, some users mainly wanted to annoy others. The explanation relies on a 1990 account from player Andrew Plotkin. He connected digital spam to a Monty Python sketch in which Vikings repeatedly sing “Spam” while a woman descends from the ceiling in a restaurant that serves Spam with everything. Plotkin used “to spam” for sending “lots and lots of useless information,” especially repeating the word spam over and over to other MUD users. The episode quotes his sign-off: “A man who doesn’t know his Monty Python is not a man worth talking to.”

The episode’s cyber reference is The Blue Nowhere

For listeners interested in the MUD era, the episode recommends Jeffrey Deaver’s cybersecurity-canon novel The Blue Nowhere. It describes the book as a cyber-thriller set during the 1990s Internet bubble, in which the good-guy and bad-guy hackers use a specific MUD to track one another. The reference connects the early, text-based online worlds to later fictional depictions of hacker culture. The Monty Python source is identified as Monty Python’s Flying Circus, the BBC program that aired from 1969 to 1974. The episode closes the word entry with a deliberately absurd, spam-themed musical line before crediting writer Tim Nodar, executive producer Peter Kilpe, editor Rick Howard and John Petrick, and sound designer Elliot Peltzman. The rest of the audio consists of the show’s network and commercial messages, including cybersecurity products focused on endpoints, social engineering, attack paths, and career search.

Show notes

Please enjoy this encore of Word Notes.

Unsolicited, unwanted, and sometimes malicious electronic messages indiscriminately transmitted to a large number of people.

CyberWire Glossary link: ⁠https://thecyberwire.com/glossary/spam⁠

Audio reference link: zumpzump, 2007. Monty Python - Spam [Video]. YouTube. URL ⁠https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anwy2MPT5RE⁠.

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