full circle back to RSS
I’m hoping this is something that becomes more of a trend in the mainstream, and not just to niche techies: the re-rise of RSS readers as we all get tired of doomscrolling social media. As this happens, I also like that new developers are re-thinking the disadvantages of RSS readers: opening it after a couple of days to find 10/20/100/400 unread articles. Terry Godier puts his finger on the issue and how Social Networks navigated this.
“Email’s unread count means something specific: these are messages from real people who wrote to you and are, in some cases, actively waiting for your response. The number isn’t neutral information. It’s a measure of social debt.
But when we applied that same visual language to RSS (the unread counts, the bold text for new items, the sense of a backlog accumulating) we imported the anxiety without the cause.
Nobody is waiting.
I’ve been trying to find the right name for this phenomenon, and I think I’ve finally landed on it:
PHANTOMOBLIGATION
NOUN: The guilt you feel for something no one asked you to do.
Brent borrowed email’s interface, but RSS isn’t people writing to you. It’s people writing, period. You opted to be notified of their existence. The interface implied debt where none existed. The obligation became phantom.
Social media learned something interesting. Facebook could have shown you “24,847 posts you haven’t seen.” They understood this would paralyze, not engage. So they made a different choice: no unread count. Infinite scroll. Algorithmic curation. They traded phantom obligation for manipulation. The feed never made you feel behind. It made you feel like you might miss something right now. Different poison.”
I’ll be keeping an eye on his new RSS reader, Current (Apple only). For now, I’ll stick with the tried-and-true and OG, NetNewsWire.