what even is RSS?#
the problem#
imagine you like reading 10 websites (blogs, news, comics, whathaveyou).
now, to see if they have anything new, you have to visit every single one of them, every single day.
it’s a manual chore that scales terribly 😖.
the solution?#
RSS 🤓☝️
RSS allows you to subscribe to those websites.
instead of you going to them, they come to you.
shoutout Aaron Swartz.
why use it?#
control#
screw the algorithm. seriously. 😔
why let some opaque corporate AI decide your dopamine hits?
xitter and instagram are designed to keep you angry and engaged.
they’re in the attention business, not the education business.
they push the “viral” slop and keep track of what slop you like, to serve you slop per taste. a true feedback loop of garbage interrupted only by ads and other “paid to promote” garbage.
with RSS, YOU are the curator. no shadowbanning, no “suggested” brainrot.
just the raw content you actually asked for.
efficiency#
stop wasting life. 😾🫵
visiting 20 different sites manually is primitive behavior.
it’s the digital equivalent of hunting and gathering when you could just farm.
instead of opening 50 tabs and stress testing your machine, RSS brings everything to one inbox.
scan the headlines, read what matters, and then go touch grass.
privacy#
the modern web is a surveillance state. 👁️👁️
you click a link, and 50 trackers fire off your location, device info, and browsing habits to build a profile on you.
RSS readers (mostly) fetch the content without you having to visit the site directly.
you get the info. they get nothing.
stop feeding the data machine.
debloating the web#
have you tried reading an article lately? 😭
popups, newsletter begscreens, autoplaying videos, and enough javascript to mine crypto in the background.
RSS strips all that bloat. it parses the text and images and leaves the trash behind.
it’s like reading the internet in a terminal, literally sometimes.
offline access#
internet down? sitting in a lecture hall with zero signal? ✈️
good RSS readers cache your articles.
you can read your entire feed while you’re offline.
try doing that with a xitter feed.
how does it work?#
under the hood, it’s just a text file (usually .xml) containing metadata about all the published content from the site.
you feed this link to your RSS reader, and the reader periodically checks the file for updates, letting you read the content right there in the reader (because reader, duh).
how to use it?#
AboutFeeds does a very good job at explaining that.
if you live in the terminal like me:
- get a life and let this be your shower reminder.
- you probably already know about Newsboat.
if you want something on your phone, try Feeder or ReadYou.
i personally use Thunderbird (sorry not sorry 🙏) on desktop and ReadYou on phone.
i will be walking you through adding this site to your RSS reader.
getting the RSS link#
sites publish their RSS feeds under a variety of filenames (ex: index.xml, feed.xml, atom.xml, rss.xml, or sometimes just /feed because standards are merely suggestions)
thankfully, putting up an RSS link is a flex, not a standard.
it separates the cool kids from the corporate silos. and so, people feel obliged to flaunt it.
usually, you would see that bright orange button with the RSS logo (looks like a wifi icon having a nap) on most sites that publish a feed.
sites like getrssfeed exist in case sites feel like making you play Sherlock Holmes.
on this site, you’ll be able to find it at /index.xml and the RSS icon at the page footer.
additionally, you can subscribe to category specific feeds simply by visiting {category}/index.xml, for example tech/index.xml
feeding the RSS link#
feed the RSS link into your RSS reader.
the reader fetches the updates, and you get the content. done.
happy reading. 🥰
videos#
here’s a video of chris (CTT) explaining RSS and how you can use it.
here’s another related but totally optional video for you to watch chris ramble about his overengineered RSS feed setup.
