My son receives a weekly magazine at our house that he loves. It contains his favorite comic strips created by amazing authors and artists. He enjoys getting something in the mail just for him, and the best part is that it doesn’t come with a bunch of plastic toys like the magazines at the supermarket. There are only a few ads for the comic book company’s workshops and merchandise, which I think is a fair trade-off. Wouldn’t it be amazing to receive a magazine filled with articles from your favorite bloggers every week? That’s kind of what RSS is like.
RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication” and is a web feed that allows users to know when new content has been published on a site they follow.
According to Wikipedia:
RSS…is a web feed that allows users and applications to access updates to websites in a standardized, computer-readable format. Subscribing to RSS feeds enables a user to keep track of many different websites in a single news aggregator, which continuously monitors sites for new content, eliminating the need for manual checks. News aggregators (or “RSS readers”) can be integrated into a browser, installed on a desktop computer, or downloaded on a mobile device.
I must admit that I haven’t been great at using RSS until now. I signed up for the RSS reader Feedly a while back, but I forgot to check it regularly. I didn’t curate my feed well, so I often ended up with posts from major platforms that I didn’t want to read at the top of my feed. I’m also trying to reduce my screen time at home and read physical books more frequently.
Part of the reason for neglecting RSS might have been that I used to get most of my links from Twitter, where there was always something to read. Now that I don’t use Twitter, it’s harder to keep up with the people I used to follow. Not all of them have migrated to Mastodon, and many post less frequently. That’s why I decided to dive back into RSS. I updated my feed and started following writers whose work I admire. So far, it’s been a positive experience! Although I follow a lot of people, the amount of content hasn’t become overwhelming yet. It might if I neglect it for more than a couple of days and feel like I’m missing out.
I’ve noticed that some bloggers have a message saying, “It seems like you’re reading this in RSS…”. There must be a way to detect that, which is pretty cool. I need to figure out how to do that*!
RSS has a bit of an “indie web” feel to it, which is nice, but it doesn’t seem like a lot of people outside the indie web community actively use it. I’m sure there are communities that do (and probably many more unknowingly through podcast subscriptions). However, when I talk to my non-web-dev friends, I doubt many of them actively subscribe to RSS or even know what it is. Still, it’s a better alternative to doomscrolling.
By the way, you can also subscribe to this blog’s RSS feed ☺️
* Please don’t contact me about this, I’ll probably figure it out after thinking for more than two minutes.
