The Culling (or, How RSS is ruining my life)

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The Culling (or, How RSS is ruining my life)

I use SharpReader as my RSS aggregator. I have around 50 blogs I monitor. It's killing me, time wise. I really enjoy reading people's work, and I know that on many of the blogs, I'm one of the few regulars. However, it is time to remove some from my list so that I can function in a normal capacity. I feel bad not reading those that I enjoy, but a lot of the times, the blogosphere does resemble an echo chamber as the same story is rehashed over and over. Granted, I like the opinions that narrate the story, it's just too hard to keep up with so many posts.

How many blogs do you monitor?

rolled out on Wednesday, June 30, 2004 7:45 AM

Comments

# re: The Culling (or, How RSS is ruining my life) - King of Fools

Rolled Out On: 6/30/2004 10:08 AM

I cycle through adding new stuff which I find which I really like, and then cutting out half of the sites when I start getting really unproductive. Also, tastes change...I remove some folk when I get tired of reading them everyday. I'm at about 35 right now.

Ok...36 once I get you added to the list.

# re: The Culling (or, How RSS is ruining my life) - Scott B

Rolled Out On: 6/30/2004 10:40 AM

150...that is how I found this post. Heh.

I love RSS. I can find posts that interest me, out of hundreds, in a few minutes.

# re: The Culling (or, How RSS is ruining my life) - Robb Allen

Rolled Out On: 6/30/2004 11:14 AM

Yeah, but let me discuss a problem I have. I can't stand unread email. The thought that I might have an unread message in my inbox keeps me up at night. And I am not kidding!

It's actually a bad habit for me. My RSS reader feels about the same. I can't stand to see a bold title because that means something might be unread!! So I spend a lot of time reading things when I have work I need to do.

# re: The Culling (or, How RSS is ruining my life) - Maura

Rolled Out On: 7/1/2004 4:47 AM

Until you asked, I had never counted. Now I know I have 86. Yikes. But I don't have an RSS aggregator - I just keep a list and go down it as the mood strikes. Many of them are not daily posters so I only hit them weekly, but going to my favorites daily since they tend to update often. I pretty much only cut anyone if they stop posting inexplicably.

Having e-mail coming at me constantly and trying to keep up would make me nuts.

# re: The Culling (or, How RSS is ruining my life) - cbeck

Rolled Out On: 7/1/2004 7:21 PM

Too many! And I'm compulsive about it too. If I know someone posts regular and I don't see a post when I visit, I'll return every time I'm near a computer to see if it has been updated yet. And I'm always near a computer. I probably need medication.

# re: The Culling (or, How RSS is ruining my life) - Robb Allen

Rolled Out On: 7/2/2004 12:29 PM

If you find medication that helps, please let me know where I can get a prescription!

# re: The Culling (or, How RSS is ruining my life) - Kevin

Rolled Out On: 7/2/2004 11:58 PM

300 (I've culled down to that from 500+). That includes media feeds too.

It's easy once you get over the "unread message" anxiety. I get so much e-mail I long ago gave up responding to it all, though I'm good about scan reading it all.

With RSS feeds it's a no guilt way of monitoring. I don't think there are more than 2 sites in my SharpReader where I read every post, and I sleep fine with that...