An aisle at the Spam Museum in Austin, Minnesota. A Massachusetts man has become a “SPAM-fluencer” after a video of his bag, full of SPAM, being searched by TSA went viral on TikTok. The video, which has garnered more than 5 million views and 470,000 likes, shows Worcester resident Joel Kaimakani Libed laughing as a TSA agent unpacks nine cans of SPAM from his carry-on bag. “I’m so embarrassed,” Libed says in the video through chuckles. The TSA agent seemed to have taken it in stride, asking, “They’re not all regular flavor, right?” Libed says that they’re “special” flavors, to which the TSA agent says that in that case, it’s fine. In a follow-up video, Libed explains that he is a performer, singer, and actor who was born and raised in Hawaii. While on tour performing with an Irish band, Libed said, he stopped by the SPAM museum in Minnesota and stocked up on merch like a shirt and mug. Liben then shows off his new collection of the canned meat, gifted to him by an employee of the museum, ranging in flavors from maple to teriyaki. But the SPAM enthusiast said he was most excited by the “Hawaiian Collector’s Edition” SPAM. “I was on tour, so I lugged all this SPAM with me for about two and a half weeks,” Libed says in the video. “By the time I was ready to go home and I packed my bags, and my bag was overweight, I had to take all of this as my carryon,” Libed explains, motioning to the 12 SPAM cans in front of him. Libed said that despite the somewhat awkward encounter at airport security, the TSA agent who checked his bag was “really freaking cool.”

National attention, partnerships with SPAM

After that fateful day last month, Libed was interviewed by national news outlets and earned himself a follow from the official SPAM TikTok account.