Let's talk about RSS and social media.
RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication (or RDF Site Summary, if you're boring). RSS is old internet technology. While they date back to the 90s, the modern version really came to around 2005. Fascinatingly, it hasn't seen any big format updates since then, so feeds from 2005 will still work.
I got into RSS almost a year ago (10 months or so, actually), mostly on a whim. My inspiration here was actually webcomics. I've been reading webcomics since I was young (and am conversationally familiar with a lot of the classics). And if you read a lot of webcomics, a couple questions naturally occur. One is: how does anyone keep up with more than like 5 regularly updating webcomics? 5 was consistently about my limit, before I would start forgetting to check some and then 2 months would pass and I would suddenly remember they exist, but not know anything about what was going on in them.
Something else you notice if you read old classic webcomics is that many of them are bastions of the old internet. At the time I was reading them, any webcomic that had been going for at least a decade (which was many of the big ones) was started in late 90s/early 2000s. Accordingly, they bear a lot of the marks of the old internet. One of them is that they all have an RSS button, so I was always aware there was something called "RSS". I didn't know what it was, but I figured it was some subscription service, because it was something that occasionally broke (according to news posts, anyway), and was often mentioned next to email lists. As a carefree kid, I didn't really care. I didn't believe in subscribing to things.
While we're on the subject, something else that I think is interesting is that old webcomics often crossed over, did cameos and guest strips, and just linked to each other often. That was how I found new comics, mostly, and the success rate for finding things I enjoyed was way higher than any algorithm ever has been. This is the inspiration for me doing a link of the day on each post, and I'm considering adding more archives of things I like to this site, like Youtubers and webcomic reading lists. I haven't yet because sharing your personal tastes always feels really vulnerable and I'm bad at that.
For most of my life, my social media policy was easily stated: don't. There were several factors to this. I took the "dangers of social media" talks they gave us in middle school a little to heart. I didn't have unfettered computer access until later than most of my peers, meaning that once I did, it felt awkward and too late to start. Besides, for most of my childhood, I didn't get along with my peers anyway (I was bullied quite badly), so the idea of continuing to interact with people from school outside of school was nonsense. And, probably, there was a small amount of elitism. It's easy to make yourself feel like a better person for not doing something and this was something I had over all my Facebook using fellow students.
I got over this when I needed Facebook to interact with people at a super special once in a lifetime "summer camp" expirience for nerds while in high school. Still, I kept actual use to a minimum and outright denied having it until I got to university. McGill clubs, as it turns out, live and die on Facebook. Every club wanted me to join their group, my major had like 3 different key Messenger chats, and so on. Also, the girl I was dating at the time was a big Facebook user.
Fun fact about me: I am very susceptible to algorithmic feeds. Also, I hate being tracked and resent that they're tracking me to begin with (blame too much reading Doctorow). Once I followed a couple meme pages, I found Facebook eating up more and more of my free time as I kept scrolling mindlessly. I wasn't like addicted or anything! It was just consuming more of my time than I wanted it to.
I didn't really post to Facebook. Something about posting things publicly freaks me out (and still does, I flinch a little whenever anyone uses my real name on Mastodon). That was kind of my guiding social media philosophy for this period: lurk. A lot. It's kind of nice seeing what your friends are up to and it's always a fun game to put the stupidest comment below their post.
I will always have mildly fond memories of Facebook as the place where I first came out, using my favourite meme of all time:
Then the pandemic started.
This had two results. One was that I found that having things I could do on my second monitor during a zoom lecture was really bad for my focus. The other was that all my clubs shut down, some never to return (miss you McGill board game club, where else will I get banned from the Secret Hitler table for being a manipulative bitch).
The bad news was that everyone still wanted to use Messenger, so I didn't delete my Facebook until like two years later.
A (now ex) blackmailed me into trying Instagram briefly. I posted a picture of one (1) squirrel and then deleted it after we broke up.
So about three years ago (that doesn't feel right), I released my first video game. Since then, I registered a Twitter in order to sElF PrOmOtE. I didn't really use it for this, so it kinda just sat unnoticed until two years ago, when a (now ex) said hey, you should follow me on Twitter. And thus began my shitposting era (which you can now follow on my Mastodon because holy fucking shit why is Musk like this).
I've been thinking a lot about this journey recently. I deleted my Twitter a few weeks ago and have been looking through my archive. I'm working on a project to live post all my Tweets to Mastodon via bot, in real time 2 years delayed. The bad news it that it'll take 1 year to get to my good tweets. The good is that means it'll function as a present for my future self, which is my favourite kind of code to make.
I also got into RSS roughly a year ago, so I wanted to reflect on that too.
So here's where I'm at. I currently have one social media, a Mastodon on a server run by a friend of a friend. I think that my Mastodon expirience is atypical, being run on a small server where everyone mostly knows each other. This meant we haven't really had any moderation problems (no one is being a huge dick because there are direct real life consequences and any non chill people aren't being invited in). On the other hand, it's pretty great. I would recommend it. It isn't really a social media per say. There is no discoverability. I've been followed by a couple strangers (I think?) thanks to my bots. I'm fine with that, honestly!
Someone wisely said isometry.group has weird group chat vibes, and I think that's how I'm approaching it these days. It's got some people I know and some I don't. I can curate a little, focusing on the people I find interesting. Anyone can add anyone into the group chat, but they can't force them into my view of it. I can be followed by strangers, but that doesn't affect anyone else. It's a little like a semi-public space. It has a wonder energy. Mostly, I use it for shitposting and very occasionally for tech advice.
I don't want to go viral. I've always joked that if I started a YouTube and got 1k followers, I would delete it immediately. This hits the perfect level for me. I'm happy with it. I do think that there are some issues with Mastodon and maybe the fediverse, sure. But as of now, it works for me and that's what's important. Maybe someday I'll move on. But for now, I'm happy.
I do have an important rule I try to follow, which is to never get involved in any kind of serious debate on Mastodon. This is for a few reasons, such as I don't enjoy arguing. But especially, I think 500 character posts are just a bad format for debate. I also think that there's a sanitation issue. When I was using Twitter and would scroll the timeline a lot, it would be a big mix of things. Cat pictures, memes, people yelling at each other, yelling at the world, "why aren't more people mad about this", the saddest and angriest news stories, etc. And I don't think this was good for me. It was fucking stressful, honestly. I was trying to use Twitter to relax and look at cat pics.
So, nothing serious on Mastodon. It's for memes and jokes and cat pics and following my friends. This is not to say I'm uninformed. That's why I have RSS.
RSS is a technology that lets you follow arbitrary websites. Essentially, it's a file the website posts that is easy for a computer to interpret, which lists all of the posts on that website you might want to view. You can get an RSS reader, which keeps track of "feeds" for you, and alerts you to new posts by refreshing the RSS file often. I use NetNewsWire, which is great (I only have one suggestion, which is that article tags would be huge. But it's free, open source, and automatically syncs between my phone and laptop. Mac only though).
I currently follow over 200 sites and blogs (although some are defunct). Here's a .opml file listing them all, which you can import into your own reader if you want to match my list. It's pretty good, pulling from a variety of blogs and newspapers. I do most of my reading on the transit these days, and it feels more productive than any of the little phone games I used to play, and I feel like a more interesting person capable of conversing about a number of topics (mostly capitalism and big tech criticisms).
Mastodon is where I play and RSS is where I'm serious. This is a huge advantage! I never get punched with disturbing news when I'm not ready for it. I can properly compartmentalize, and I think that's had positive effects on my mental health. I know what to expect when I log on.
And to contribute to that in turn, I use this blog (which has an RSS feed!) when I want to say something serious.
My current list of sites is:
- Mastodon - for shitposts
- Here - for serious posts and project updates
- Itch - hosts all my games
- Kofi - in theory allows you to send me money (you could be the first uwu)
And I feel comfortable with this. I've been toying with getting a second Mastodon for bot updates (they all went offline for a few days when I moved recently, and I felt weird only posting that via my shitpost account). I only realized later that what I should've done was make a short blog post. That's gonna be the rule going forward: you want project updates, you RSS me.
I do have a couple of updates planned for this website! I'm working on adding comments and I think it would be cool to have some kind of poll section. But I've been busy lately, so it hasn't happened yet. For now, give me a shout on Mastodon if you want to comment on a post. Hopefully soon!
Something I see a lot is the idea that one social media can do it all and I'm increasingly doubting that. It's a lot harder to go viral on Mastodon, which works well for me, but can be frustrating to creators who depend on going viral for money. People seem to want their social media to do everything and I think that's because they want to be able to attract and interact with everyone. But increasingly, I think that's a mistake. Let different softwares focus on doing different things well. It'll be okay. Having different spaces to play in is good for you.
In conclusion, try RSS today. And if you haven't put an RSS feed on your blog yet, I'm coming for your head (you know who you are).
Today's cool link is tvtropes. Hit random trope a few times and lose yourself in the examples.