He Maps Spam, Eh?

The purpose of this blog is to unspam the Shabbat table. Please share.

Try this one at your dinner table tonight:

"Raise your hand if you ever received spam."

Everyone who ever had an email account will, of course, raise their hands.

(By the way, did you ever stop to realize that there are no children anymore who remember a time without cell phones?)

Now that you've got their attention, try this:

Who knows why unwanted bulk email is called spam?

The story of spam begins in 1936.

Back in 1936, in Austin, MN, Hormel Foods profits were plunging. Jay Hormel knew that he needed a new way to market his canned pork shoulders.

American housewives were listening to the radio. He wanted a catchy branding that would make a great jingle.

Competition + Depression = Necessity, the mother of invention.

Jay announced that he would award $100 for a catchy name for his canned ham.

So he spiced up his New Year's Eve party that year, he held a contest: $100 cash for the best new name for Hormel spiced canned ham (that's $1,800 in today's dollars).

You had to submit a suggestion to get a drink at the party.

Hornel observed, "Along about the third or fourth drink they began showing some imagination.”

The winning entry came from Kenneth Daigneau, a 3-bit New York actor who was there because he was related to a company VP.

The scheme worked: by 1940, seventy percent of American households had spam in their kitchens.

In 1941 the US started shipping it to our allies.

(Question for the table - Who were our Allies in WW2?)

If you guessed the UK and USSR, you would be right.

We sent them so much spam that Kruschev later said, "Without Spam, we wouldn’t have been able to feed our army."

When the US got into the war our GIs ultimately had to take in (and take on) 150 million pounds of it.

GIs evidently got pretty sick of it and, to everyone's surprise, refused to eat it after they got home.

So why is annoying bulk email called spam?

Because a group of comedians in 1970 created a silly 3-minute spoof of spam.

If you never saw this, or forgot about it, here tis:

The gist is that every item on the restaurant menu contains Spam and this customer is upset because she doesn't like Spam, and every time someone expresses an opinion about Spam (pro or con), a group of Vikings (who are also dining there) start singing a Spam song, that goes like this:

Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam,
Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam,
Spamity Spam, Spamity Spam!
And so when email was first being used in the 1990s, some culturally-clever emailers started calling overberaring and unwanted email "spam" and the practice of sending such email "spamming".

A meme was born.

It's a cute story, but what does it have to do with anything?

Personal anecdote: I discovered this week that some people I correspond with regularly are not getting my messages because their ISP is flagging them as spam.

Oy. So maybe that's why I never heard back from so-and-so.

It seems so unfair. What am I supposed to do?

A couple final questions for your table:

• What do you personally do when you don't hear back from someone?
• Have you ever found an important message in your spam folder that didn't belong there?
• If you have to take the time and effort to check your spam folder, what's the point of having a spam folder?

And the big one: What does spam have to do with Shabbat?


Shabbat Shalom

PS - The above image is Luf, "Israel's Kosher Spam". If you click on it you'll find something equally kosher, "slightly" healthier, immeasurably tastier.

PPS - Did you solve today's title?

PPPS - End-of-the-year pitch time: If you appreciate JSL's mission and programs (and this) (and this) and would like to show your support and partnership, please make a 2018 tax-deductible contribution here. Wishing you and yours a healthy and inspired 2019.

 

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