3 ms·

I like mark-all-as-read, but I reeeaaallly like not having a read/unread dichotomy in the first place, since it wires my brain to treating everything like a to

I like mark-all-as-read, but I reeeaaallly like not having a read/unread dichotomy in the first place, since it wires my brain to treating everything like a to do list. I use the excellent vore (vore.website) for rss and I just get a chronological list off my RSS feeds. My brain has a feature called "memory" that stops me accidentally reading any articles twice, and even better, I don't have a feeling of obligation to my rss feed reader.

spiffytech 2y ago
I feel the opposite: I want more things to track read/unread. When I pop into my RSS reader, my sole goal is to read something new. I want to read from one publication at a time, and I want to know I've seen everything they post (not every article is worth reading, but if their best content isn't so good that I care about missing it, they aren't worth subscribing to). Without read/unread this doesn't work. I've got too many feeds to just remember the latest thing I've read in each. And I want my RSS reader to only show publications with new articles, rather than clicking one after another like pulling a slot machine to see if it has new articles. And my memory isn't perfect — I may mistakenly think I've already read something (especially when a big story is covered repeatedly in many places). It's nicer to just let the computer worry about it. This is one of the big reasons I convert my social media follows into RSS (I just did bsky last night). I want an inbox! For me, it doesn't feel like an obligation. It feels peaceful knowing I definitely saw everything I might care about, and that I delegated the tedious parts to a machine.
- benrutter 2y ago
  It's so interesting how different people all are! I 100% get everything you're saying, but for me "knowing I definitely saw everything" is just something I'm not able to care about without accidentally making the whole business feel like work. I thia is exactly what makes RSS great. You and me can both subscribe to the same blog/podcast/whatever, but choose different technologies that fit how we want to use it. That's something that could never really happen on traditional social media.

spiffytech 2y ago

I feel the opposite: I want more things to track read/unread. When I pop into my RSS reader, my sole goal is to read something new. I want to read from one publication at a time, and I want to know I've seen everything they post (not every article is worth reading, but if their best content isn't so good that I care about missing it, they aren't worth subscribing to). Without read/unread this doesn't work. I've got too many feeds to just remember the latest thing I've read in each. And I want my RSS reader to only show publications with new articles, rather than clicking one after another like pulling a slot machine to see if it has new articles. And my memory isn't perfect — I may mistakenly think I've already read something (especially when a big story is covered repeatedly in many places). It's nicer to just let the computer worry about it. This is one of the big reasons I convert my social media follows into RSS (I just did bsky last night). I want an inbox! For me, it doesn't feel like an obligation. It feels peaceful knowing I definitely saw everything I might care about, and that I delegated the tedious parts to a machine.

benrutter 2y ago
It's so interesting how different people all are! I 100% get everything you're saying, but for me "knowing I definitely saw everything" is just something I'm not able to care about without accidentally making the whole business feel like work. I thia is exactly what makes RSS great. You and me can both subscribe to the same blog/podcast/whatever, but choose different technologies that fit how we want to use it. That's something that could never really happen on traditional social media.