I'm in the 'it's annoying, but whatever' camp, for the most part anyway.
If there was a way to shut it off, I would (and I already checked a few times). I know it won't bug most people as much as me, but I get annoyed easily when I try to get all my settings just how I want them but someone or something overrides them.
In the grand scheme of things, a maximum of one unwanted notification per day is really not a big deal.
Now, if you wanted to fix something that really bugs me, get rid of the light bulb/'change style' button that's right next to the bell. I can't tell you how often I hit that one by accident and end up blinding myself when it switches back to light mode.
OP isn't asking how to stop notifications on a thread they're watching, they're asking how to stop notifications on a thread they're not watching and have never even clicked on before. For example, I just got a notification for
this thread, never heard of it before then. Yesterday I got a notification for
this one. Sometimes it's for polls or TOTW threads.
You're not understanding. These are notifications for threads the OP has never watched, never replied to, never opened and likely didn't even know existed. It's like telling someone they can stop all the spam calls to their phone by clicking the 'opt out' button whenever they give their phone number to a website.
Having said all that. If I had notifications set to push to my phone or email me, I'd be considerably angrier about it.