I didn’t expect to end up back in RSS.
It was a recent episode of The Talk Show with Brent Simmons that nudged me there. Listening to him talk with John Gruber about feed readers took me back to a time when the web felt more coherent. Less fragmented. You chose what came into your field of vision. It didn’t arrive pre-sorted by some faceless algorithm whirring away in a data centre somewhere across the world.
The next morning I downloaded NetNewsWire again. Ten years later.
I’d forgotten how satisfying it is.
You open it and there’s just a list. Names you recognise. Writers who’ve earned your attention. No outrage ladder. No engagement bait. No invisible black box deciding what deserves oxygen.
One of the default guest feeds is Manton Reece. His posts struck me straight away. Snappy. Immediate. Almost like tweets - except they live under your own name. Your own domain. Your own banner.
RSS might be retro. But it endures. Vinyl is retro. Fountain pens are retro. The things that last usually are.
It asks you to choose. To curate your idea swatch. To pay attention to the nuance.
If you’re reading this in a feed reader, you probably get it already. And if you’re not, you might be surprised how quickly it feels like regaining control.
