What word represents a useless, stupid, comment on the internet? [closed]

Solution 1:

In the beginning,

Well, there's egg and bacon,
[...]
Egg, bacon, sausage and spam
[...]
Spam, sausage, spam, spam, spam, bacon, spam tomato and spam
(etc.)
stlyrics.com

(Choir: Spam! Spam! Spam! Spam! Lovely Spam! Lovely Spam!)

Then came the internet. At first is was dominated by professionals getting academic work done. This meant people were expected to act professional. Also, it was slow. So anything that wasted your time was extremely painful.

Then came automation. Accidents happened and some posts turned out to be repetitive or meaningless¹. Some who complained about this expressed their displeasure by comparing it to the Monty Python song quoted above. People soon realized that the only consequence from these accidental postings was complaining. And a passive aggressive weapon was born.

The result of this behavior has been called floods, junk, and simply noise. But spam, at least to me, was the first internet meme. I remember trolls that had obviously combined their copy and paste buffers with key repetition to repeat the word spam over and over. Giving them the power to waste your time without even having to bother to type let alone think. Other than the Monty Python bit itself this is what most likely popularized the usage.

This is why so much of the internet is moderated today. Users have the power to downvote this answer exactly because I have the power to make it nothing but:

Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam ...

And that only cost me 8 keystrokes. This is why, despite helping the US win World War II, Hormel, the makers of spam, inventors of the word, owners of the trade mark, gets second billing in the definition of spam:

spam noun

1. irrelevant or inappropriate messages sent on the Internet to a large number of recipients.

2. trademark - a canned meat product made mainly from ham.

verb

1. send the same message indiscriminately to (large numbers of recipients) on the Internet.

google.com

So either the internet owes Hormel an apology or Hormel has secretly created the greatest viral marketing campaign of all time.

(Choir: Spam! Spam! Spam! Spam! Lovely Spam! Lovely Spam!)

Solution 2:

On some websites, such content is referred to as shitposts. However, this term is part of the jargon of some communities, and is unknown outside of them.

Solution 3:

For useless/stupid comments I would use guff, chuff (slang), drivel, or just plain old crap. For irrelevant comments or messages promoting something else, I'd use spam.