RSS readers make me want to jump into a vat of acid!
What RSS reader are you reading these words in right now? Please don't email me the answer. Instead, whisper it into a cup, cover it with some cling wrap, and use its lingering reverberance as a sweetener for tomorrow morning’s cold brew. This is a gift you've given yourself.
You can thank me later. I accept words of affirmation and Apple Pay.
But hold! You say you’re not reading this via RSS? You—gasp—are reading this on my actual website? O rapture! Welcome! Please, stay awhile. Get comfy. Enjoy this typeface. I chose it just for you.1
Before we continue, I do feel compelled to clarify that I am not here to yuck anyone's yum. I understand that this topic might be a bit touchy for some (maybe you), and I suspect that touchiness is directly proportional to the amount they just whispered into a cup (a gift!). Just remember: these are my thoughts on my very good blog and I am, for all intents and purposes, a dumbass to whom you should pay no mind.
That being said... I have tried for a long, long, long, long, long, very long, long time to get behind RSS and I... Look, I just can't. I can't. I won't. I will not. I will not.
What triggered this? I dunno, man, I guess I saw some new app being kickstarted by The Iconfactory and I'm sure some people will love it, but I see something built around the concept of "a single chronological timeline of your most important social media services, RSS feeds, and other sources," and I just want to put my head in the toilet and scream and scream and scream until I have displaced all of the oxygen in my body with toilet water and I drown in the toilet because my shit gills have yet to evolve.
I think Groupon may be to blame for this reaction.
Okay, that's dramatic. It was my mom.
In the early 2010s, my mom was obsessed with Groupon. She bought loads of them. She showered her friends and family members in a flurry of great deals. My email inbox overfloweth with discounted massages and manicures and meals.
And I didn't redeem a single goddamned one.
Why? I hadn't yet been radicalized against the incessant creep of bullshit tech grifts feeding off the engorged pustule of venture capital with no real monetization strategy. I wasn't philosophically opposed to gifts—giving or receiving—even though I wouldn't necessarily say that I like to receive gifts.
Perhaps I was just an ungrateful piece of shit? I mean, yeah, maybe. I dunno. I've got plenty to unpack. I'm working on it.
But I think the thing that drove me nuts was that I was just existing in the world, being a person, and someone decided to give me an errand that I did not ask for. A task I didn't know needed to be completed was suddenly thrust upon me. I had expressed no desire to participate in any of these activities, and yet I felt obligated to do so. She already paid for the discount. The deal sat glimmering excitedly in my inbox. The text messages from her telling me to redeem the Groupon tapped at me over and over and over, slowly burrowing a hole into my fucking head like some archaic form of torture.
At a certain point I had to tell her directly: "I appreciate that you're thinking of me, but these are not things I'm asking for. You're not giving me a gift. You're giving me a task."
Eventually, the Groupons stopped.
But the obligations remained. Typically self-inflicted, because of how my brain does.
It starts with a backlog. A movie I gotta watch. A game I gotta play. An album I gotta listen to. They get added to a list, and because the march of time is incessant, it is impossible to do everything the second you think to. So another gets added. And then another. And then another. And then eventually you're looking at your Steam library at the hundreds of games you purchased that you were sure at one point or another were totally your shit and definitely something you were going to play, but you can't help but notice that most of the titles are gray. Never installed. 0 hours playtime.
Well that's fine, you think, Just pick one. Play it.
But now there are other ones—newer ones!—the old ones look so booooring. How can you possibly choose?
And there it lingers. The obligation. A little imp flitting about just out of sight, whispering into your earcup—not a gift! A reminder, a quiet shame, a bzz bzz of your text message telling you, "You haven't done the one that the other people done and now you feel left out."
RSS readers are just another place for the imps to play.
I will admit that there is something inherently alluring about organizing all of the information you intend to absorb into one place, but I find, in practice, the incessant drip, drip, drip to overwhelm, rather than delight. For years, I would try the latest, coolest, most hyped RSS experience (and also Feedly, lol). And while many were pleasant to look at, and, yes, thoughtful in their design, none could solve the core problem for me: if I see a list of things to do, I do not find it invigorating. I find it paralyzing. I'm just trying to exist, and I open the app and suddenly there are the tasks, the obligations, pouring in. Perhaps there is a piece in there—hell, maybe even two or three—that I really want to gnaw on, but the numbers always go up. Here are all the things you missed. Here are all the things you need to do. It's a never-ending feast. You can chain your face to the trough and never feel nourished, only full. Opening an RSS reader is about the quickest way I know how to trigger a panic attack in myself next to Googling "colon cancer symptoms reddit." Even when I do my best to only subscribe to sources I truly care about, having the app populate an endless feed triggers violent convulsions deep within me. It's like opening a door in your house only to discover your parents fucking. You gotta get out of there as quickly as possible, even if it's through a window.
"Is this even about RSS reader—"
Okay, and also—real quick—it has to be said that I love websites.2 I believe personal websites are a part of the larger whole of someone's creative identity. It is an object I want to cherish, to immerse myself in, just like I long to clutch a book I adore in my hands. I want to see a whole person spilling onto the page. Not the tidied, uniformly-formatted collection of just words on a pleasant gray background, rendered in San Francisco Rounded, visually indistinguishable from the piece that came before and the piece that follows.
Yes, I could use an RSS app solely to perform triage (a job) and find the things I want to read, and then go to the website directly, but that just adds another layer of maintenance (a job). An obligation to prune (a job). A dip of the toe into the swirling miasma that with every gurgle threatens to suck me in and smother me in more (a metaphor). More, more, more.
More more more moremoremoremore moremoremore MORE
So I reject them! No more! RSS readers, YOU ARE NICE TO LOOK AT BUT YOU MAKE ME SO SAD.
"Ohhhhhh-kay, but aren't you worried you might miss something you'd truly love? Something that deeply affects you? Something that makes your rethink your entire world view and change your whole life?"
I mean. Eh. Ask me ten years ago? Yeah, fucking devastating. Of course. Sign me up.
Ask me now? There is no shortage of wonderful in the world, and I trust I will remain sated. That life-changing stuff? That good, good shit? It has a way of finding its way to you.
I'll be fine.
But I know I gotta stop listening to these imps or I'm gonna lose it.3
1 It's called IvyPresto Headline, by the way, set at 300 weight and a size of 1.4em. The line height is 1.6em and the letter spacing is 0.03em. I definitely know what these mean. Please do not ask me to explain it to you as I am very busy and also, as I am about to establish (or have already established, depending on how you approach footnotes) in the piece above, I am trying to find more inner-peace, devoid of feelings of obligation. Anyway, IvyPresto Headline looks very good on most displays, especially high-DPI displays such as a 4K monitor, or a "Retina Display" like you might find on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac. I won't lie, I would describe its appearance on my current monitor as "serviceable," but, in fairness, that is more of a byproduct of working at a 2560 x 1440 resolution than anything the font itself is doing. This is the life I lead: one of a person who has a PC attached to a 1440p display because I play a lot of video games and this is the best bang for what little bucks I have—and because this machine is so well-positioned on my desk, the convenience of its existence means I default to working from it most days. I do have a perfectly lovely MacBook Pro with a very fine, very beautiful display. It would render IvyPresto headline exquisitely, as I just said, but sometimes we make sacrifices. Perfect is the enemy of good, and my perfect setup is not currently attainable. I would rather not go through the rigmarole of plugging in my USB-C hub and switching video inputs on this monitor, only to have the macOS interface rendered at a mediocre 2560 x 1440 resolution. Could I take my quite portable MacBook into another room? Perhaps, but I recently threw my back out and it sounds extremely uncomfortable to sit at my dining table or on my couch. Frankly—and this may have to be a different piece, but!—have you ever actually tried writing on a "laptop" computer in your lap? It's bad. It's bad and no fun and it's definitely not comfortable. I'm, like, glad we can, I guess? Versatility is nice. But it mostly sucks shit, and my scoliosis/spina bifida wombo-combo ensures that finding the optimal orientation for lap-computing is nigh impossible. Anyway, IvyPresto Headline. It's very nice.⬏
2 Except the shitty ones, natch.⬏
3 I'M ALREADY WRITING THIS WHILE HYPED UP ON STEROIDS FOR MY FUCKING BACK AND RUNNING ON TWO HOURS OF SLEEP. I'VE HAD ENOUGH.⬏
