What is an RSS reader?
I’m mashing together two subjects, or more, that are touched on by terrygodier (Terry) who just released a new RSS reader and a rambling from evanforry (Evan) on what news consumption means in today’s oversaturated landscape of fast news and cheap content factories.
Curation
At the core, an RSS reader, is a vehicle for curation, which is just a fancy word for selection - you are gathering multiple sources that you consider worth your time.
There is a lot to unpack in this, so let me.
Gathering
You are bringing the information, and only the information to you, rather than you going to the information and been bombarded by everything that is not, strictly, the subject - no fancy graphics, no fancy formatting, no fancy modern web functionality, good old text, some markdown, couple of images.
Everything looks the same, you are forced to judge the book by its content, as there is no cover so to speak.
This is often forgotten, but is huge, for the ones not familiar, is like having “Reader mode” on by default on anything you see - amazing.
Source
An RSS reader is nothing without sources, and here I think many have not grasped the tool, because they came to it with a poisoned view of what is meant to be.
- It is not the place where you put all the websites you ever opened and found interesting once
- It is not the place where you go read your high volume - low context news hose
It’s a place where you carefully add & remove voices you believe say something worth listening to.
A lot of those voices are, in my experience:
- Personal blogs
- Newsletters
- Single journalists in a large publication
- Very very niche aggregators (bearblog trending, hacker news, lobsters…)1
And when those voices turn into a parody of themselves or lose their je ne sais quoi, you cut them, brutally and unceremoniously (that applies to a lot of things in life, but it will be another post).
You
The crux is that your RSS reader is very personal, it is a custom product that suits only one person in the world: you. It is not what you are supposed to read, it is what you want to read, it is what you almost have a need to read.
Time
You might think one perk is that is all free, or mostly, but you are paying for all of this, a very high price, the highest of prices: time. You do all of this and it takes time to get started, to setup, find your headspace and find the voices you want to hear all in order to give better value to your time.
I don’t need to doomscroll social media, news organisations, every random blog I ever came across, I don’t do it on the web, and certainly I don’t do it in my RSS reader.
Taking it back to Terry
Terry created a new RSS, it looks good, but is not an RSS reader as I know, is a way of introducing someone else in that contract between you now, and past you that added a source, Terry is adding an algorithm: it will give weights to different sources, decide how long an article is visible, remove any indication of how many articles you have… it will curate (aha!) your RSS for you.
This is wrong, we have been here before, RSS reader are the refuge for people that want control over their intake, I’ll be damned if I let the algo back through the front door!2
Taking it back to Evan
As an ex-smoker (if it even means anything) I can tell you news consumption ticks the same addiction boxes:
- I do it when I'm bored
- I do it and 5 minutes later I could do it again
- It removes you from being in the moment with other people
- You think you got it under control
- You see other do it and think it’s normal
- It’s part of your routine, a ritual (morning = check news, coffe = check news, bathroom = check news…)
I say news for me, but is social media for others, short form video for others… we all have a itch.
RSS in a way is not different, if news is cigarettes, RSS might be a calabash pipe, more intentional, more long form, more “taking your time” but ultimately, not the best thing you could do with your time - I am still struggling to find what it is the best thing to do with my time after all these years...
Update: Evan has his own take on this, worth your time. He asked nicely how to manage Hacker News feed, for you, and anyone interested, you will like this one hnrss.org - I have also updated note 1 with my actual feed.
And only if you have fine control on the number of posts and quality that get pushed - I don't subscribe to **all* HN posts, only to posts that get 300+
commentspoints, or something like that, basically what's trending.↩This is no shade on Terry btw, I wish him the best of luck with his project and it look very good too, he just fitting my narrative points today - sorry Terry!↩