// December 1st, 2009 // Challenges, December 2009, NaBloPoMo
Somewhere along the line of when I was learning how to use a computer and eventually managing to build a website, RSS feeds became the ‘thing’.* If you owned anything that updated, you HAD to have an RSS feed in case someone wanted to follow what you were saying.
In my case, no one.**
I did try to make a go out of using it, honest! I spent ages subscribing to the blogs I liked, organising all my feeds into relevant categories, and checked them whenever they updated. But it’s just a bit disconcerting when you open Google Reader and there’s thousands and thousands of unread items. I know I could just mark everything as read, but my conscience kept on whispering to me, “you haven’t read that one yet. Or that one. Or that one. Or that little one you thought you could get away with. I saw what you did.”
I’m one of those people that can’t stand anything unread, and will always read all my emails (despite being crap at responding). Luckily, I can keep up with all my emails, but having thousands of unread items in Google Reader every day was annoying, despite me spending hours each day clearing it all. Eventually, I had had enough, and promptly removed the thing.
In retrospect, I could’ve just subscribed to blogs that updated less, but then what would be the point? The blogs I like update umpteen times a day, and I have no time to follow all their posts. Unlike some, I don’t want to know what I’ve missed, which is what my RSS reader kept trying to do. I found it a bit like a whining relative. “You haven’t read [blah]‘s post on [blah] yet! Read it or it’ll stay unread!”
This blog does have an RSS feed (but that really wasn’t my choice; it came with WordPress), and you’re welcome to follow it if you like, but if you agree with what I’ve said above, don’t. Heh. I would be honoured if you counted me as one of the people that you want to stay updated with.
I do see the virtues of RSS, as if you want to stay updated with everything a website does, and keep up with all the latest news, it’s perfect. However, I feel that ignorance is bliss (at least when it comes to blogs). My way of keeping up to date with everything is… *le gasp* MANUALLY! I have a disarray of unorganised bookmarks of the blogs I like.*** I open them in multiple tabs every now and then to check on how they’re doing; sometimes there’s something new for me to read, sometimes there isn’t. I may miss out on some things (for example, I missed out on the chance to buy a signed xkcd book a few weeks ago), but generally, I like the feeling of surprise and delight I get when I visit someone’s blog for the first time in a few days to see that they’ve added something new that wasn’t there before.
For me, the pros balance out the cons, and I know that my old-fashioned bookmarks won’t nag at me if I don’t read them for a while. They may be old, but they still lead me to amazing stories and show me new things every day.****
*Wikipedia tells me RSS properly took off in 2005, when Microsoft adopted it. Meh.
**A quick check of my stats actually reveals there are 17 people subscribed to this feed. Erm, hello there. Stay with me, please! *clings petulantly*
*** After spending ages organising my feeds in Google Reader, I just couldn’t be bothered to do the same with my bookmarks, despite the fact that I am primarily using bookmarks these days. It’s on my To Do list, honest!
****And my strange metaphor of the day is that RSS is the nagging aunt to my bookmarks, which are the really awesome grandfathers. I’ll take the awesome grandfather any day.
Twitter: jayeless
says:
I’m one of those people who insists on keeping up with the news, so I love Google Reader. But then I simultaneously hate it for some of the reasons you do (i.e. it gets to 1000+ unread articles and I am filled with despair, although I sure don’t try reading every news article in full. The summaries are informative enough!).
Whenever a blog post appears in Google Reader, I read it on the spot. News items I tend to let accumulate and sort through them once a day (…theoretically…) and read the most interesting. But so as not to overwhelm myself, I’m only subscribed to one world news feed and one Australian news feed. I follow other news agencies (and people who RT interesting articles from other news sources) through Twitter, so if they post an interesting article when I’m on Twitter, I read it… otherwise, I don’t.
The system works well enough for me. When I’m not too lazy to sort through the items, that is!
People actually use RSS? I never have. I wasn’t even entirely sure what it was until now.
The version of wordpress I use (the nonself hosting one) has this nifty function where you can subscribe to other wordpress blogs and every time someone posts a new post it comes up under one of the tabs. But, and this is the good bit, it doesn;t linger there forever until you provide proof you’ve read, once you’ve clicked the tab once and once someone else has posted it disappears. This lets me keep up to date but also to skim or occassionally ignore any posts I want.
Of course, only one or two of the blogs I subscribe to post that often, which helps.
I did have to resort to Google reader in the end though, becasue as this function was so handy, I was ignoring anyone who wasn’t the sort of wordpress blogger I am. Still, as I count scrolling through someone’s feed as reading, it’s not too onerous there either…
Solnushka´s last blog ..On advent calendars.
Yeah, i don’t subscribe to RSS either. I just don’t have the time. I have a list of blogs that I follow through my Blogger dashboard. What I like about that is I can go back and read as many or as few as I have time for on any given day.
~ifer´s last blog ..Recap
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