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As I'm working to get this website up and going—or, working to get it to the point where I feel like it's "done enough" to use, and leave off additional features for the future—I'm trying to get an RSS feed going for this page. Website builders like Wordpress create automatic RSS feeds, but Neocities (which I'm trying out for the first time) is focused on static websites, so I have to build the RSS feed myself (and make some blog posts to get it running, which is mostly why I'm writing this).

This begs the question, of course: why bother?

On the modern web, as most folks have shied away from following individual blogs and have moved on to social media platforms, the days of RSS feeds is largely forgotten. To tell you the truth, until a few years ago, I didn't know about them at all. I'm a bit too young for them, or just didn't spend time in online spaces where they were relevant before moving to social media. But for some, myself included, they are still useful and used.

A few years ago—I can't remember exactly when—I started using Feedly. It's a little business-bro-y, and a bit too enthusiastic about AI for my liking. There are probably better readers out there, but at the time, I liked it because it had a web app and a phone app. And now I've got a bajillion feeds on there so it'll be a project of itself to switch…a project for the future. I don't pay for it. On occasion I do run into a moment where it'd be nice to have the paid version—which allows you to create RSS feeds from websites, and follow Twitter feeds, amongst other things that I have never wanted to do—but I've never paid for the full version and don't feel like I'm lacking.

And it's been great! I think the hardest thing about stepping away from social media like Instagram, Twitter, etc., is leaving behind my favorite artists and creators that are really thoughtful and I enjoy listening to. Not everybody has a website or an email list, and some, unforunately, are left behind completely. But I've found that switching to RSS feeds gives me a decent enough collection of artists and such to follow. I've also found that while it's not possible to add Instagram or Twitter to (unpaid) Feedly, Tumblr accounts work pretty well (though I have noticed that the feed updates less frequently than others—once a day or every few days, so a bunch of posts land all at once). YouTube works well also.

Now, I try not to follow too many social media accounts. I'm not trying to recreate a social media feed. Just a select few creators I want to keep up with. One of the reasons I wanted to step away from social media was to get out of the algorithm, especially due to the prevalence of rage bait and a lot of negativity online. But also because I wanted chronological posts, and I wanted to be sure to see the posts that didn't have any interaction, because the algorithm left them behind! And RSS feeds have been working really well for that.

Many people have detailed the benefits of moving away from social media, so I'm not going to reiterate them here. Try it, if you haven't. I'd like to instead share some of the RSS feeds I follow that have brought me joy.

• Ask A Manager
• It's Going Down
• NPR Up First Daily Newsletter
• People of Print
• Queer Zine Archive Project
• Nightmare Magazine
• Seize the Press

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