Back in the old days I used to subscribe to a lot of websites using RSS and would consume my news and such at my leisure, all from one common interface. I even self-hosted my own RSS Feed app, anyone else remember Shaun Inman’s Fever?
RSS mostly faded from the public lexicon when Google shuttered its Reader app, but most sites still publish a feed and there are still some really solid apps available for subscribing and reading.
I had stopped using an RSS Reader for a bunch of years, Fever development went dormant and then I found myself getting most of my news and updates from the same people and sites, just via their tweets on Twitter.
As Twitter became more of a shithole, leading me to abandon and eventually delete my account, I relied more on things like Bluesky and Google News, and to a lesser extent, Reddit.
Honestly though, they all suck for the purpose of collecting or gathering the stuff I am interested in without stupid listicle clickbait headlines leading to AI written content or commentary by the user posting it.
I also found the act of seeking out information this way time consuming and tedious, and mostly leading to frustration, annoyance, overwhelm and exhaustion. I was wasting my time.
So I decided that it’s back to RSS for me. I did some digging around the various programs, sites and services available before choosing News Explorer. It is feature rich, infinitely customizable, does everything I could possibly need or want, and then it does even more than that.
On a side note, the url for the News Explorer site reads like “new sex plorer” – I wonder if they ever noticed that?
I am still in the process of gathering my feeds and organizing them to my liking but this is really going to change the way I get news and other information, for the better. I am back in control, no more noise and all on my schedule, my mood, my interest or my need.
I started off by importing an old OPML file I had exported from Fever years and years ago, with some interesting results.
Some of the sites were still of interest to me so I filed them in the appropriate folder and moved to the next.
Sadly, there were also so many sites that are either no longer active, or have completely disappeared, so I dumped those.
Then there were all the “why the fuck did I ever subscribe to this” sites. I was astonished by the number of blogs I used to read that upon examination now are written by homogenous white men who are typically conservative, christian, business focused, intolerant, brown people hating, pronoun fearing, progress resisting stodgy old fucks.
I guess I myself was either more tolerant of that particular combination in the past, or perhaps the current political climate of hate and fear has emboldened them to be more open about these opinions and beliefs. I can’t believe I used to respect, almost admire some of these guys, so it was with a wistful “get the fuck out of my feed!” that I hit the delete button.
Your thoughts?