Years and years ago there was a Monty Puthon skit that took place in a restaurant. A couple was trying to decide what to eat. Periodically a group of Vikings at another table would begin chanting "Spam, spam, spam, spam," over and over, drowning everything else out, until people yelled at them to shut up. This quieted them down, for a few moments at least, but soon they started up again.
Fast-forward to the days of IRC and BBS chat areas. Sometimes people would set up macros to mimic the Vikings in that skit, thereby filling the screen with "Spam, spam, spam, spam" and making the conversation annoyingly hard to read, especially if it scrolled off the top of the screen.