To Keep or Not to Keep: Spam and the Culture of "Found"

We recently read Paul Graham’s 2002 article “A Plan for Spam” for our Digital History class and as a group, we came to the surprising realisation that we do not, in fact, get much spam anymore. So this got me thinking: What would an archive of spam look like? Would it tell us anything?

The idea of keeping what used to be “garbage” has been gaining currency in recent years. People are finding meaning in the things others throw away, from grocery lists to postcards. See, for example, Davy Rothbart’s Found Magazine (and the book he’s published) – there is an internet archive of the most random objects people find, and find meaning in. Today’s “find of the day” was a handwritten note asking Joey to give Grandpa more hugs because he feels left out. I had my own experience in that regard: last spring, I was walking across the Maryland Bridge in Winnipeg and I came across a manila envelope stuffed with pages of handwritten notes and drawings that had been mailed around 1991. I read the whole thing, but then decided to leave it where I found it. I couldn’t bear to throw it out, but I didn’t know what I would do with it if I kept it. Maybe someone else would find more meaning in it than I did.

Things like this are invested with meaning by the finder. But the internet opens up a whole new level of “junk” to be discarded or cherished: from spam, to old emails, to myriad inactive web pages, there is more potential garbage than ever before. But I don’t think the appeal of something like Found Magazine is in mass produced fliers or advertisements anymore than there is an appeal to an archive of old spam. The appeal is in the human element, and in the connection between the object and the finder. People send things to Rothbart because they felt a connection to them, and they think maybe someone else will too. I’ve never personally felt a connection to junk mail. In fact, I’d prefer to forget it altogether.