I felt it was time to cull my RSS feeds again – I last looked at them in June. There have been a number of instances where the sites, sadly, no longer exist or I found myself reading less and less posts. There's no point swiping to dismiss 95% of items in the hope there might be something of interest so those feeds are now gone from my reader.
I'm not sure if my tastes have changed, I've become less patient, or that certain bloggers and I have drifted apart this year. If it's the latter then that's fine, there should be no expectation for anyone to always write stuff that I'll enjoy. That's the beauty of the web: we all do our own things and will sometimes have coinciding interests. We drift in and out of each other's online lives as needed and there is no point in trying to force something when those interests no longer align. It doesn't make any of us bad people, just different.
This does, however, bring the (internet) age old problem of discovery back in to focus. How to find new interesting people, especially without using social media – although that is definitely a double-edged sword and one I'm not willing to wield.
@colinwalker I did a big cull around the time I moved from Inoreader over to NetNewsWire. I find I'm no longer willing to subscribe simply because they're constantly being quoted or mentioned by other people I follow. I rely on serendipity for finding new blogs to add to my list.
Absolutely, but serendipity can sometimes be a bit slow 😊
@colinwalker good shout cleaning out. People sometimes kid themselves into thinking just cos it's not evil SOCIAL following list it doesn't need a cull.
I'm working on a website making RSS feed lists more interconnected & useful, incl. crowdsourcing info about activity of feeds. Lmk if you're interested to beta
Sounds interesting.
@colinwalker have emailed you a link to my prototype. Hit me back if you wanna join my small beta list. Would welcome your perspective as someone using a custom blogging engine (the often-empty today homepage is sick!)