News bites

An old web standard may be the key to unlocking a better feed.

Mar 16, 2021

Some relationships are beyond our control. Like the teacher whose sourness towards your older sibling trickles down to your time in their classroom, an ex who forces you to confront every aggravating trait you’d avoided seeing in yourself, or the parking enforcement officer hellbent on dishing out tickets at 10 am on the dot every Thursday. Then there’s Ron*, a client at the gym I used to work at, whose uncanny ability to zero in on my insecurities routinely outmatched my attempts to avoid his uncomfortable conversations.

He meant well, but Ron had a nasty habit of making just enough off-hand remarks to leave you a little less sure of yourself than you’d been before he and his mafioso-adjacent attire waltzed in.

He usually arrived just as I started wrapping up for the night, ready to gab the night away. I get it, I’m a talker too, so I tried to humor him as often as I could, but a fragile ego can only take so many comments such as “ayy, you sure do have a lot of hair on those legs, why don’t ya put some on ya head!” before crumbling to bits. Eventually I learned to take Ron’s aloof slights in stride, but it got harder to hide my sprints for the door the longer our interactions lasted.

Even when I did make it out the door without bumping into him, Ron knew exactly where to find me and how to flag me down like a perfectly-executed targeted ad. Over the years, Ron’s popped up in gas stations and grocery store lines, always ready to track me down and bust my tattered chops just a little bit more. These sorts of inevitabilities, whether in the form of the world’s Rons and their jabs at your soft spots, the junk mail you toss in the recycle bin every afternoon, or the ever-present algorithms that alter our feeds, might make things a bit messier, but with the right set of tools, they can be managed. For the fatigue brought on by increasingly-algorithmic news feeds, an old piece of tech may hold the key to a better timeline.

Lighter fare

For the uninitiated, RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is an old web feed standard that gives sites a template to show readers updates in an accessible format. For news sites, podcasters, YouTubers, and anyone publishing timely content, RSS makes it easy to get those updates to passionate followers as they’re released with minimal effort required. That information usually gets presented in an RSS reader, an app or service that takes all of those site updates and wraps them in a singular feed. Depending on the outlet’s preference, the RSS reader will usually show a blurb from the article or the full text, with the ability to click through to the website. Though RSS has many uses, its main function is to get news to readers without all the fluff of social media and algorithms. Where a publication’s Twitter account may be focused on sharing both fresh content and evergreen pieces, the site’s RSS feed will be dead-set on freshly published articles, free of any commentary or reply-guys. Since these updates live entirely separate from any other feeds, there’s less incentive to constantly stay plugged in. If you just want to check-in on the world at the end of a long day, your RSS feed will gladly provide all the latest, free of any distractions.

One of RSS’s greatest strengths lies in the fact that, unlike most social media feeds, everything gets presented in reverse-chronological order, so you’re always seeing the latest stuff first, curation be damned. Sure, that might mean you miss out on the re-shared cover story from the archives that you might have enjoyed, but you also avoid the trap of sharing an article from 2018 with the caption “why isn’t anyone talking about this??”

RSS’s detachment from algorithms and curation means that you’ll have to put some more effort into setting things up at the jump, but once you’ve got things just right, you’ll be left with a feed that’s more tailored to what you actually want to read, rather than what an ever-changing string of code guesses you might click on.

All You Can Eat

Setting up an RSS feed is easy, but it can get out of hand quickly, so it’s best to keep things light at first and add as time goes on. First, you’ll need to pick out an RSS reader, of which there are many to choose from. I’m a fan of Inoreader, though unless you’re interested in power user features like filtering and automation, it might be a bit overkill. Feedly is a powerful free option that has a nice interface and enough features to get you going, and Feedbin is the best looking option if you’re not going to use a third-party reader, though it costs $5/month and there’s no free tier.

Once you’ve picked out your reader of choice, it’s time to start giving it some sites to look at. I’d recommend starting with about 10 to 15 of your most frequently-visited sites, that way you’re not too overwhelmed with stuff the first few times you log in. As you use your feed more, you’ll notice what you’re not reading and what you wish you’d added, and you can adjust as needed. Think of your feed less like a bookshelf you’re aiming to stuff and more like a garden you’re cultivating over time, and you’ll have a nourishing feed in no time.

This is optional, but I highly recommend finding a third-party RSS reader to get all your news from, as they tend to provide a better overall experience with more customizable options. If you’re on iOS, I recommend Unread for its unmatched design, or Reeder for more power user features like full-text extraction and built-in read later support. For Android users, FocusReader seems to offer the best mix of aesthetics and features. Before paying for any of them, though, try out the first-party app for your RSS service of choice and get a feel for your reading habits, then seek out the app that’ll best mesh with those habits.

Reeder offers the best interface and power user features

After you’ve gotten the basics down, you can start to tinker with the funkier aspects of RSS. Did you know that you can add individual Twitter feeds to your RSS reader? Same with YouTube channels, subreddits, and even SoundClouds? You can even send RSS feeds to a Slack channel or your Kindle, if you’re feeling fancy. Like I said, this can all get out of hand without any oversight.

Algorithms aren’t going anywhere, and their impacts on our feeds will keep changing as our online habits grow and morph. Even with the omnipresence of ai-generated feeds, though, there’s still room for personal curation and the reprieve it can grant us. With a bit of time and care, an RSS feed can give you a centralized place to stay informed on what’s going on in the world and other topics you care about without anything tacked on that’ll weigh you down.

📚 Good Reads:

How the pandemic has changed social media (Recode): Rani Molla looks back on how social media usage has evolved over the last year of the pandemic. Some of us are using it more, some of us are using it less, and for all of us, our posts probably look a lot different than they did pre-pandemic. As the article notes, the pandemic’s allowed the messiness of real life to bleed into social media, and that’s likely to stay, in favor of the more curated stylings of the pre-COVID-19 world.

Our technological dystopian future is here, and I hate it (Buzzfeed): Our relationships to our screens have certainly changed over the past year, as they became our only vessels to the outside world, and the main way to tune into the unfolding of the past year’s events. Scaachi Koul reflects on the downfalls of an entirely online life, and how the last year has put a strain on our relationships with our devices.

Email and Slack have locked us in a productivity paradox (WIRED): The best software doesn’t just do the work of simplifying how users complete a task or craft their work, it meets users where they are and allows them to do the work with as little friction as possible. The problem, as Cal Newport notes, is that simplifying tools alone doesn’t simplify the work. To make life more manageable for workers, we need to be willing to evaluate where workflows may be falling short or causing harm, and experiment with better ways to collaborate without waiting for another app to swoop in and save the day.

🌐 Just Browsing:

📺 David Lynch on his productive pandemic, and intentional daydreaming. 👾 World of Warcraft as a memorial for lost loved ones. 💰 Is this the end of tipping? 🎸 How emo came alive on TikTok. 🍲 The Western diet is wreaking havoc on our guts. 💪🏼 On the realities of getting fit like your Instagram Fitness Crush. 🧸 Did you know that there’s a black market for Neopets? 💻 The world of text-based gaming is fascinating. 📰 How Facebook got addicted to spreading misinformation

🔧 Toolkit:

💕 And now, here’s something we hope you’ll really like:

This video on the camera work in Surf’s Up is a fascinating look at the innovative ways animators shape their stories for the big screen. They created a pretty wild camera setup that allowed them to use a real camera to move around their virtual environment to give the film more of a shaky-cam feel.

✉️ You’ve got mail:

I want to hear from you! What sorts of things have you been enjoying on your feed this week? Let me know down in the comments, or drop me a line on Twitter.

My thanks to Medea Giordano for editing this issue.