Why email startups fail

Perhaps historically, but these days I think spam refers to senders that don't play by the rules. Unsolicited (ie didn't obtain the recipient's address in a legitimate manner), no unsubscribe link (or not honored), technical measures intended to circumvent various filters, etc.

I agree. These days I don't report email as spam if it has a (working) unsubscribe link.

You may define it that way, but the original property of spam seems to apply nevertheless: They are low quality and noone really likes them.

The fact that you have to frame it your way speaks mostly to the fact that apparently your income depends on spam being seen as acceptable and not a scourge to humanity. But that's just my perspective...

Oh, so a day is not rainy if your coat dries after it?

That's a rather baseless assumption about my income. Does it really seem so unlikely to you that a reasonable person might not use the exact same criteria as yourself? Why are you so confident in the generalization of your own perspective to the population at large?

Define "low quality" and "not liked". Each person will classify a given message differently. At least in the general case it's hardly realistic to expect a sender to classify a message from the perspective of a specific recipient prior to sending it.

On the other hand, it is reasonable to expect addresses to be acquired via legitimate means (ie collected only with the consent of the recipient) and to cease attempts at contact when requested. That's essentially the boundary between reasonable conduct and harassment.

No, rain is still rain. I just stopped complaining about it as it rains 24/7.

The ugly and awkward thing about the unsubscribe link is I never subscribed in the first place. Someone else did on my behalf. To even ask to be unsubscribed, I feel, is taking some ownership of the subscription and playing into a crooked system. It's like being sent an invoice for something I never ordered and needing to cancel the invoice. And even if you say, "buzz off", who is to say someone won't decide to "resubscribe" you next day, given it's outside your control.

Me personally I won't give a pass to business with an unsubscribe link, I have extreme disgust that we're in some make-believe pretend world that I asked for this in the first place

I’m with you. I learned about the concept of “implicit opt-in / consent” while I was building an email marketing feature on a platform and I found the concept disgusting, but was told that because it’s technically legal, our customers considered it table stakes.