Very interesting, Smeghead. AOL 1.0 debuted in 1989. You may have witnessed the original Internet “spam” usage. (The 1978 incident linked above was spam, but there is no indication that anyone called it “spam” at the time.)
Here’s a good site on the subject:
http://www.templetons.com/brad/spamterm.html
“The “green card” spam didn’t coin the term, and it wasn’t even the first “spam” – though it was the first really large commercial one.”
*ccwaterbacl, look above. engineer_comp_geek already gave that site.
Ok, I missed it, sorry. I would say that’s a pretty comprehensive site on the subject.
Another passage from the same site: (my underlines)
“There are unconfirmed reports as well that the term migrated to MUDs from early “chat” systems. Rich Frueh believes the term originated on Bitnet’s Relay, the early chat system that IRC was named after. When the ability to input a whole file to the chat system was implemented, people would annoy others by dumping the words to the Monty Python Spam Song. Peter da Silva reports use in early 80s chat on TRS-80 based BBSs, but feels since they imported other Bitnet Relay customs, the term may have come from there. Another unconfirmed report from a BBS user claims to have seen it defined as a “Single Post to All Messagebases” though this origin seems unlikely in my personal opinion.”
I played MUDs in the late 80’s and we used the term SPAM for any unwanted “screen noise”. For instance, if someone kept repeating a question on a channel or just being obnoxious etc, we’d say something like, “Stop Spamming the channel jackass.” or “Cut it out with the Spam.”, because stuff like that would quickly fill up the screen and cause scrolling… which was a massive pain on 1200 to 2400 bps. SPAM still has the meaning of “unwanted screen noise” on MUDs and MUSHes today.