RSS Feeds
Subscribe to a feed, and stay in the loop!
I need to rebuild the RSS templates for an improved experience. The books feed doesn’t currently work. You should still be able to subscribe to it, and when I fix it, you’ll get the updates. And due to the site being relatively new, some article cateogries don’t have content yet. Work in progress!
Feeds
Or you can—if you really want to—subscribe to Everything. This option isn’t recommended because you’ll get updates from random bits of content that make up the site, such as reviews. If you really don’t want to miss out on anything new, this option is for you, you crazy dulick.
My thoughts on RSS
For those not in the know, RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. It makes it easy—provided that you have an RSS reader—to receive updates when new site content is available.
Back in the day, RSS feeds were pretty well respected. Everyone had an RSS reader. They were as ubiquitous as email addresses.
Alas, the golden age of the web has died, conceding its place to the massive corporations. Want an update from your favorite author or artist? Then follow them on social media!
The problem with this is how we—as the common users of the Internet—have given up our control of what content we can and cannot see to someone else. They are the gatekeepers. Nothing is free and open anymore, subject to policy changes, politics, and cancel culture.
But the Internet was built to be open. Everyone can build a website, publish content, and interact with each other (psst it’s called email). The Internet wasn’t meant to have walls. It wasn’t meant for a few big companies to suck up all of the attention so they could feed us ads.
Hell, most of my Google searches return companies with dynamically created (or AI created) content. The more content they create, the more money they make. But this makes it so very difficult to find the REAL people, the REAL reviews, the REAL suggestions and helpful information, not just regurgitated information written for machines (SEO: Search Engine Optimization).
So what’s the answer? RSS. It’s just one technology, but it’s a step toward a more open internet.