Bizzare Facts

The seemingly innocent act of sending one digital announcement in 1978 became the original sin of the internet—the moment a vital communication tool was weaponized for commerce. On May 3rd, **Gary Thuerk**, a marketing manager at Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), wanted to advertise a new computer model. Rather than targeting a handful of people, he blasted the message out to 393 email addresses on the **ARPANET**, the military-academic network that predated the World Wide Web.

This single, unsolicited, mass-sent email sparked immediate and intense outrage. Users, who considered the ARPANET a professional, non-commercial resource, were incensed by the intrusion. They flooded the network with complaints, effectively launching the first 'flame war' in response to the first 'spam.' The term 'spam' itself—referencing the Monty Python sketch where the canned meat is ubiquitous and inescapable—didn't gain traction until the 1990s, when the problem truly exploded.

Thuerk's single message demonstrated a fatal flaw in the open design of email: its cost is negligible, meaning a sender can reach millions of people with almost zero effort. This original 'spam' proved that the moment you can mass-communicate for free, someone will try to sell you something. That moment, years before the internet was commercialized, set the stage for today’s junk folders, where billions of unwanted emails are filtered out daily, all thanks to one disruptive advertisement from 1978.