My RSS feeds from a decade ago, a snapshot of gadget blogging when that was a thing

boing
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Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2017/12/29/my-rss-feeds-from-a-decade-ago.html

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Really that BoingBoing thing how does it stick around for so long with all those photoshops of mouths for eyes?

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Apple won. cringe.

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Wait, I still follow gadget blogs.

O7VdP-1461169444-3458-list_items-computers_miinnocent_fingerhold

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James Randi’s blog retired/quiescent.

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Thank you for the phrase, “… tidal corporate forces…”; I find it powerfully evocative.

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Huh, I totally missed Consumerist shutting down. #RIP (but it had been long dead since Ben Popken left anyhow)

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Thanks for the post. Lots of nostalgia there, and RSS still remains an amazingly useful tool long after a lot of those sites vanished.

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I had just spent the night mysteriously writing about what the internet was like (in detail) in various earlier times and noting how things have changed and evolved and wondering about the things which are no more as people eventually moved on to other things, while some things continue. This enjoyable read made a nice followup to that as you described aspects of your own experience over a decade ago on the old ‘wild’ internet.

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Why do I love reading Rob Beschizza even if I don’t know what he’s talking about sometimes?

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RSS was that new-fangled fancy stuff.

Here’s the flotsam and jetsam that’s been gathering in my Fannish bookmarks since the 1990s:

https://umbraxenu.no-ip.biz/bookmarks.html

A lot of broken links, but sometimes those are interesting too.

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Sadly it seems like a lot of sites are dropping support for RSS in favour of using Facebook and Twitter. It breaks my mental health based foldering system because the only way I can read them is by going to the feed on either site.

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It’s really a reflection of a site’s attitude toward the free and open net-neutral Web, because keeping RSS support going comes at zero to nominal cost.

I’m sorry to hear that mental health sites would take the attitude that fewer people should be exposed to their resources and support (especially since regular use of Facebook and Twitter isn’t exactly conducive to good mental health to begin with).

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It isn’t the mental health sites that are the problem, most of the sites I check use RSS.

I have a foldering system which indicates how likely they are to cause an episode. General news sites get put in an “only check this if you are feeling strong” folder, more targeted political news is a tier down from that, all the way to things like webcomics which are marked “probably safe”.

Facebook and twitter have no way to implement that, and I think they have no interest in doing so. Sadly, LiveJournal and it’s forks do have something like that, but not enough places use them.

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Ah, I understand now. That’s a very clever way to handle potential triggers.

Facebook wants you to see everything, so they can gauge your reactions and incorporate them into your profile for future monetisation (based on recent news, I can’t credit Twitter with the same level of intentional behaviour).

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the guy I made a zine with in college ended up blogging there, at least for a while early on. Last I spoke to him, he was managing blogs for… I can’t remember, but something like an AOL or Yahoo. Helluva guy.

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Maybe I should make a site that just caches twitter PR feeds so people can keep up with them without going to twitter.

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… There is another system …

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This place is not a place of honor. No highly-esteemed deed is commemorated here.
I see what you did there
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