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Jul. 28th, 2021 09:54 pmI had somebody recently ask me what a RSS reader is, and why to use it. We're all on here, the site for those who make handmade pages and/or have a print book reading challenge, there's a 90% we're at least familiar with a concept of a RSS feed, so I won't get into that.
What was interesting, though, was coming up with my list of "Why I use RSS", and how it differentiates from the common talking points.
The biggest advantage for RSS feeds/readers to me, is not the "grab from lots of different sites" or "read at your own time" bits, but the privacy aspect. I am immensely reassured that there's no squad of ghosts hanging over the shoulder raising their eyebrow at a "flagrantly heterodox" feed/blog or two (or five or ten...) because it's none of their goddamned business. I don't even want to say "I've learned the best from the folks who I disagree the most" because at the end of the day, it shouldn't matter what you read, only that there's the freedom to do so*.
(I used to scroll through twitter likes/following more often than actual twitter feeds because there were less retweets to be found and more genuinely cool/daring/opinionated stuff. So uh, I am absolutely part of the problem here in some senses though I always used that information passively and positively.)
Needless to say, simple "privacy of feeds" is a reasoning I'm really surprised that hasn't come up more, especially with the rise of social media where it's almost a ... default? assumed stance? that everyone gets to see your following/likes in a literal digital panopticon. Except, strangely enough, tumblr.
Man, tumblr had a lot of things right.
*this is a generality. I'm more hardcore freedom-of-speech-especially-with-the-arts than most even on here, but only a sith deals in absolutes. : P
What was interesting, though, was coming up with my list of "Why I use RSS", and how it differentiates from the common talking points.
The biggest advantage for RSS feeds/readers to me, is not the "grab from lots of different sites" or "read at your own time" bits, but the privacy aspect. I am immensely reassured that there's no squad of ghosts hanging over the shoulder raising their eyebrow at a "flagrantly heterodox" feed/blog or two (or five or ten...) because it's none of their goddamned business. I don't even want to say "I've learned the best from the folks who I disagree the most" because at the end of the day, it shouldn't matter what you read, only that there's the freedom to do so*.
(I used to scroll through twitter likes/following more often than actual twitter feeds because there were less retweets to be found and more genuinely cool/daring/opinionated stuff. So uh, I am absolutely part of the problem here in some senses though I always used that information passively and positively.)
Needless to say, simple "privacy of feeds" is a reasoning I'm really surprised that hasn't come up more, especially with the rise of social media where it's almost a ... default? assumed stance? that everyone gets to see your following/likes in a literal digital panopticon. Except, strangely enough, tumblr.
Man, tumblr had a lot of things right.
*this is a generality. I'm more hardcore freedom-of-speech-especially-with-the-arts than most even on here, but only a sith deals in absolutes. : P
