SPAMS
“Spam” is that unwanted electronic communication that appears uninvited in our inboxes, usually via email — like a door-to-door salesman ringing your bell on a Sunday afternoon without ever having been invited. It mainly consists of mass-distributed messages with advertising intent: an endless parade of promises, opportunities, and suspicious generosity.
Paradoxically, SPAM was not born in the digital world but on grocery store shelves. It is a brand created and trademarked by Hormel Foods in 1937, and its name derives from the words “Spiced Ham.” A simple canned meat product that few could have imagined would leave its mark not only on gastronomy, but also on the history of the internet.
The connection between the word “spam” and the world of digital nuisance comes from Monty Python and their famous sketch titled Spam. In a small restaurant, the word “spam” seems to have taken over everything: it appears in almost every item on the menu, is repeated endlessly, and dominates the conversation like that one person in a group who never knows when to stop talking. As if that were not enough, a group of Vikings periodically interrupts the scene, passionately singing:
“Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, lovely Spam, wonderful Spam.”
And so a new meaning was born: something repeated so excessively that it eventually becomes impossible to ignore.
Within this world of unwanted messages there are the “scams” — electronic fraud schemes that form a distinct category of spam. Although today we encounter them on our screens, their roots go much further back than one might expect.
The first known version appeared in 16th-century Spain and became known as “The Spanish Prisoner.” The premise was simple yet effective: a nobleman would receive a message informing him that a wealthy and beautiful Spanish princess was being held captive by the Turks. In exchange for a modest financial contribution toward her release, the story promised not only a reward but perhaps even marriage. In other words: “send money now, happiness later.”
Remarkably, this technique proved highly resilient over time. In the 19th century it resurfaced as the “Letter of Jerusalem,” and by the 21st century it had migrated almost entirely into the digital world, finding a new home inside spam emails.
The variations of scams are endless, yet their mechanism remains stubbornly the same: a stranger attempts to gain our trust, promises wealth, miracles, or emotionally charged stories, and hopes that somewhere between the rush of daily life, curiosity, and the human desire to believe in something good, we will click the wrong button.
Today we receive hundreds of different spam messages in our inboxes. In France, for example, 95% of all messages exchanged in December 2006 were spam — a small flood of digital noise. But how often do we actually stop to read these messages? How often do we wonder what strange, invisible mythology hides behind their promises?
The series SPAMS is an attempt to illuminate precisely this unseen side. In other words, to illustrate the stories that end up in the digital trash bin, the narratives we mechanically dismiss, and to look — if only for a moment, with curiosity and perhaps even a touch of tenderness — at the strange world of the “unwanted.”
