The first spammer foreshadowed the troll as a fixture of attention industries

Evidence

Thuerk was indeed history’s first spammer, and as such also an ancestor to the troll, two consistently recurring characters in the new bottom-up, people-powered attention industries. The spammer and the troll have their differences, but they have this in common—they defy social conventions to harvest attention for their own purposes. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 664

Categorization

• DEFINE: Establishes spammer and troll as linked archetypes defined by defying conventions to harvest attention.
• XREF: Companion to the reader’s other reading on attention: both figures harvest attention by breaking norms, echoing earlier chapters’ attention grabbers. — connects to: The first spammer reframed himself as the father of e-marketing — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 663; The 1830s newspaper editor James Gordon Bennett pioneered trolling as an attention strategy — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 46; Viral attention harvesting began before the vocabulary describing it existed — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 943

Broader Connections

• Viral attention harvesting began before the vocabulary describing it existed #expands (0.85) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 943
• The 1830s newspaper editor James Gordon Bennett pioneered trolling as an attention strategy #exemplifies (0.80) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 46
• The first spammer reframed himself as the father of e-marketing #qualifies (0.75) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 663