[gwbas1c]

Line between cold calling vs telemarking, or cold email vs SPAM.

As far as what the line is, it's any unwanted unsolicited contact, as defined by the recipient, not by the party initiating the call or sending the email.

IE, there's no universal set of checkboxes that a marketer can follow that magically make unwanted unsolicited email / phone calls not SPAM.

[gdjskshh]

Oh, I didn't realize that some people want some unsolicited advertisements. Am I an outlier for not wanting any?

[gwbas1c]

>> it's any unwanted unsolicited contact

> unsolicited advertisements

Note the critical difference of "contact" versus "advertisement."

It's not just advertisements that are SPAM, it's newsletters, wrong email addresses, marketing. (For example, I've been subscribed to all kinds of weird stuff merely by attending political meetings. I once was sent a LinkedIn invitation to a party clown business because I attended my senator's information session on a bill he was promoting. Another time, I got a "guess" email from a high school kid trying to contact a school faculty member who had the same name as me. I've also had government demand letters for people with the same name as me, and COVID test results for people with the same name as me.)

Some people don't mind this kind of stuff. (Edit: If it's not 100% clear, I really, really mind this kind of stuff.)

> Am I an outlier for not wanting any?

I doubt it. Spend some time listening to other people, though. Some people are more tolerant of it than we are.

Personally, I think the way to reign it in is to ban all unsolicited contacts to email / phone and require that they go through a 3rd party mediator. (Kind of what happens with LinkedIn or Facebook Messenger) This way, if the 3rd party mediator sends you junk, you can cut them out.

[thornewolf]

Suppose someone called you and said "I would like to give you $10,000. Here are the private keys you can use to transfer to your wallet w/o me needing to collect any of your information."

I want no unsolicited advertisements but I want that one.

[mlboss]

What if you had a some kind of urgent need health/business/personal ? You tried finding the solution but cannot find anything. And somebody reached out to solve exactly that problem. Will you still not be interested ?

[gwbas1c]

Statement: There's been so much abuse of email and phone marketing that I think many people will be hostile to your opinion.

Opinion: The email and phone marketing (cough) spam (cough) industry is full of people who delude themselves into believing what you think. Spam is defined by the recipient, not the sender, and there's no amount of mental gymnastics that you can follow to change the definition of what spam is.