18/07/2023
On the Wonders of RSS
I certainly spend more time than the average person complaining about how much I dislike the modern internet. And yet, here I am, still using social media, still visiting Reddit, still complaining about it.
Because I don't know what else to do.
When I was younger, I just spent all my time on GameFAQs boards. That was basically primitive social media.
Has it ever been any different? I just spent all my time on a certain ring of websites, never leaving, but at the time I think I was content with that.
Am I glorifying a past that didn't exist?
Well, either way, I still miss StumbleUpon helping me with internet discovery. I made a video about it. I wrote a blog about it. I'm talking about it now. I just won't let it go.
But an ancient technology has been around for a long time, one which I haven't used until recently, and it might be what's going to save us.
I'm talking about RSS - Really Simple Syndication. This is, in essence, an XML file containing a website's latest updates.
Have you come across a blog you enjoyed? No need to bookmark it and check for updates, or subscribe to that newsletter, just follow their RSS feed.
Comic you enjoy? Follow it with RSS.
Website you like? Maybe they'll have an RSS feed. I get updates from Ian's Shoelace Site delivered to my RSS inbox every day and get a daily dose of photos of great shoelacing patterns.
Getting Started with RSS
This isn't actually my first time using RSS, I used it once before. A long, long time ago, to follow Garfield Minus Garfield. Setting up the feed was weird and confusing and I just had a feed on my bookmarks bar which I still had to manually check.
But those times are long gone, RSS readers are widespread, and make the whole process painless.
I personally recommend Feedly, although it only allows you to follow up to 100 feeds for free. It has nice features though. You can search for RSS feeds by topic, so you don't have to know what you want to follow in advance.
Once you have it set up, you can just hop onto Feedly and get a chronological list of updates from websites you follow. Website you want to follow. No more Reddit hivemind deciding what's popular. No more social media. No more clickbait nonsense. This is yours to control.
There's alternatives to Feedly of course. Feed Reader/Feed Reader Online doesn't seem to have restrictions, but it certainly leaves something to be desired compared in terms of appearance and mobile responsiveness.
If you don't care about being able to take your feeds with you on your phone, you can use a desktop reader like RSS Owl.
You can organise your feeds into folders.
You can export your organised list of feeds and take them wherever you want.
You can put Youtube channels and podcasts in your RSS Reader of choice to avoid having to even go to Youtube's homepage or check for podcast updates.
You can follow this blog's updates and my comic's updates.
RSS has been around since 1999, and I don't see it mentioned much. But it deserves more love.
Social media is linked to depression and misery, but I feel like part of the difficultly in leaving is simply because you don't know what other options there are.
RSS has turned my internet experience around. And I genuinely feel more positive for it.