I mean, how are you going to use rich text otherwise?

Homer didn't need rich text to write the Trojan War. Neither did Shakespeare, nor Ovid for their writing. My emails are way less ambitioned and are fine written in poor text.

Nobody needs rich text.

But, almost everyone does? Would you prefer all web articles to be strictly in plain text, same colour? No font changes between text and code, no colors for quotations, no indented multilevel bullet points? Basically, nothing that markdown can do. In your opinion, those things don’t improve ease of reading, right? What about syntax highlight in code - nobody needs that either, am I getting it right?

Not in emails, you got that right.

And how are emails any different from web articles? Both contain structured thoughts represented as structured text, both often contain code and quotations, lists and so on. Why special treatment?

> And how are emails any different from web articles?

Totally different. Try for one week to substitute every sent/received email with web articles instead.

It's like a cake and an elephant not being essentially the same, just because they're both made of atoms.