I Clicked 'Unsubscribe' 14 Times and All I Got Was a Loyalty Program: A Field Report

It started, as these things do, with a mattress company.

I had bought one pillow in 2019. One. Pillow. And for five years, this company — this brand family — had written to me every morning like a jilted lover with a CRM license. So last Tuesday, armed with a cup of gas-station coffee and the naive optimism of a man who still believes in institutions, I scrolled to the bottom of email #4,381 and clicked the little blue link that promises freedom.

What follows is not a story. It is a war record.

The Preferences Page: A Museum of Lies

You know the page. It loads in a new tab, which is already a bad sign — freedom should never require a second tab. And there it is, the great buffet of deception: 14 checkboxes, all pre-checked, none of which say "unsubscribe."

"Weekly Sleep Tips." "Partner Offers From Companies You've Never Heard Of." "A Little Something for Your Inbox." A little something for my inbox? Ma'am, my inbox is a storage unit. There is a dead raccoon of a coupon in there from a BBQ joint that closed during the first Trump administration.

I uncheck everything. I scroll. At the very bottom, in gray text the size of a legal disclaimer, is the actual exit: "Manage your subscription preferences." Not "Unsubscribe." Manage. As if my relationship with this mattress company is a 401(k).

I click it. I am told to confirm my email address. I am unsubscribing from an email they sent me, and they need me to verify I am me. The paranoia is staggering. Who else would be leaving? Who is the impostor frantically trying to escape your newsletter, Greg? It's me. It's only ever me.

The Resurrection

Here's where it gets biblical.

I click the final button. A green banner appears: "You've been successfully unsubscribed!" — and directly beneath it, in the same font, the same weight, the same breath: "But don't miss out! Here are 6 other newsletters you might enjoy."

Pre-checked. All of them.

I uncheck them. I confirm. Another banner: "You've been unsubscribed from Sleep Weekly. You are now subscribed to Dream Digest, Pillow Talk, and Rest & Digest."

I had performed an unsubscribe and net gained two newsletters. This is not email management. This is fractional-reserve emailing. They're lending out my address at a 10-to-1 ratio and I'm the one holding the bag.

Power Rankings: The Most Deceptive Unsubscribe Euphemisms, Ranked

5. "We hate to see you go." You don't hate it. You are a server rack in Ohio. This is emotional blackmail with a load balancer.

6. "Update your preferences instead!" The unsubscribe link's evil twin. The friend who says "you don't have to leave, just stay a little longer" at a party that ended in 2021.

7. "This may take up to 10 business days." Ten business days. To stop sending emails. A process that takes one line of code is being treated like a mortgage refinance. Somewhere, a man named Dale is manually approving my departure and he is heartbroken about it.

8. "Are you sure? Take our 2-minute survey first." A survey. About why I'm leaving. My man, the answer is a single word and it rhymes with "blemails."

9. "You can come back anytime. No hard feelings. 💔" The heart emoji. The heart emoji. This is a breakup text from an entity that does not have a heart, only a churn rate. I have received warmer rejection letters from law schools.

A Resignation Letter From Your Brand Family

For those who wish to leave with dignity, I have drafted the following template. Feel free to adapt:

Dear Valued Sender,

After considerable reflection, I have decided to pursue other opportunities in the crowded marketplace of my attention. This was not an easy decision — largely because you made it structurally difficult, spread across three tabs and a CAPTCHA.

I want to be clear: this is not you, it's the 9,000 of you. The daily emails. The "we miss you" emails sent 11 hours after the previous email. The birthday discount that expired on my birthday, which, bold move.

I wish you nothing but moderate open rates. Please do not contact me via the channels of my friends, my phone number, or a retargeted ad for a beanbag I looked at once in 2022.

With best regards and a cleared inbox, A Former Member of Your Family

The Toll

Fourteen unsubscribes. That was the mission scope. Fourteen brands, fourteen confirmations, and by the end I was subscribed to a fishing newsletter from a company that sells phone cases. I don't fish. I don't know how this happened. Somewhere in a server farm, a machine learned something about me that isn't true, and it will act on that information forever.

The unsubscribe link deserves better than this. It was promised to us in the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 like a promised land, and we arrived to find it's a parking lot with a pre-checked checkbox. Pour one out for the little blue link. It died doing what it loved: technically existing.

Anyway. This morning I got an email with the subject line "We've noticed you've been quiet. 👀"

I didn't click it. I'm not a rookie.

I forwarded it to my lawyer.