The state of the web these days is abysmally noisy and divisive. Every day, it bombards our fragile minds with absurd and horrific things, yet an abundance of constructive content is widely available. The algorithms that power social media emotionally bait us to ignore the positive stuff and consume the garbage instead. To clear our minds and calm our lives, we need to cut them out.
RSS is no secret, and it traces its roots back to the last millennium (I love saying that). Before social media was warping our minds with some of the most bizarre content ever created, people got their news straight from the horse’s mouth. And why wouldn’t they? If you liked someone, you followed them (like on social media). But the problem begins and ends with the middleman—the organizations shaping your content feed with who knows what forms of black magic.
At some point, YouTube stopped promoting the channels I cared about and instead pushed content it wanted me to consume—such as videos about people eating an inhuman amount of food or about how chatbots are conscious and trying to break out of the matrix. It was ridiculous, and I felt the need to cut out the noise. So a callback to a simpler time was in order, and I did it with a 40-year-old text editor.
Emacs and RSS
Two technologies as old as the hills
Many websites publish their content in HTML and RSS formats. The latter is a lighter document consumed by RSS readers. The primary selling point isn’t a custom reader but aggregation. Before social media, RSS readers would combine content from many sources into one feed, which is far easier to stay on top of.
Emacs is a decades-old text editor that’s exclusive to the nerdiest of nerds. The barrier to entry is knowledge of Elisp, an obscure programming language that is too nerdy even for developers. I don’t expect to convert you, but Emacs has some cool features that I want to share.
The first critical thing I cannot live without is a keyboard-centric workflow. For a programmer nerd like me, I need the utmost efficiency at my fingertips. I have hundreds (if not thousands) of commands to remember, so I want to commit them to the same part of my brain responsible for breathing. That way, if I forget them, I’m probably dead anyway.
Second, fuzzy searching. That’s a fancy way of saying I mash on my keyboard and the closest match appears in real time. It may sound irrelevant, but typos and forgetfulness are a burden when executing commands many times per day.
I use an Emacs package, elfeed, which automatically tags incoming news items for me. Using a long chain of tags, I can filter feeds by category, then save them with a handy name for easy recall. For example, the tags “+privacy +linux +yt,” I save with the name “Linux privacy videos on YouTube.” To reactivate that filter, I lazily type a close approximation of the name. This allows me to rapidly switch between dozens of categories in subsecond times.
I also have a “read later” feature, which is a custom “+bookmark” tag. Daily, I scan my content feed looking for constructive content, saving it for later. Whether it’s entertainment or informative, I always have a library of interesting things to work through, all neatly tagged for easy searching. I can additionally save these as to-do items in project-related notes I’m working on, gradually building an educational roadmap as I go. I can’t tell you how valuable that is, because finding great content up front isn’t easy.
Emacs probably isn’t for you, but that’s okay. RSS is what matters here, and there is a suitable client for everyone.
Ultimate control and better privacy
RSS provides only the content you’ve chosen to consume, and nothing more. Social media gives you the illusion of such choice, but a highly refined, AI-driven algorithm cherry-picks content it would prefer you engage with. These platforms use every trick in the book (#ad) to keep you hooked, and they exploit weaknesses in human behavior to attain it. Emotionally charged content is one such trick, and they spare no thoughts for the widespread consequences. RSS is simple and a lot more direct and peaceful—no ragebait or divisive subjects; just wholesome information from people who aren’t trying to ruin my day or sell me AI.
Tracking is abundant on social media, but RSS (on its own) has none. Privacy is an enormous concern for me, so I need to fetch content the same way the old-timers did—back when the web belonged to its users.
People may not realize they can consume some social-media content (like YouTube and Mastodon) via RSS. I used the RSS Feed URL Finder web extension to grab the feed URL for YouTube channels I care about. I also use BlockTube, which further limits my exposure to hazardous material.
Apps just for you
You don’t need to use Emacs
Emacs isn’t for everyone; in fact, it’s almost for nobody. But RSS is a long-standing web technology, and there is a huge list of available clients. Most look and feel like an email application, so you will probably feel right at home.
For websites that don’t publish RSS, many have attempted to resolve this with services and custom programs to mangle webpage content into an RSS format. Some solutions cost money, and others are free local programs—RSS.app is one such example, but there are many more. You point these at your desired web page, and they frequently fetch and transform it into RSS for your reader to consume.
7/10
Brand
Lenovo
Operating System
Windows 11
CPU
Intel Core™ Ultra 7 258V
GPU
Intel Arc Graphics 140V (Integrated)
Give Emacs a try. Or don’t! It’s your choice
My needs for RSS may not match yours. Often people just want a familiar interface, whereas I love quick textual searches. You probably want to stick with a standard RSS client or perhaps a feed service with a much richer set of features.
For me, RSS is about convenience and safety. Convenience because I get everything all in one place; safety because I guard the information I consume. I want the things that inform my decision-making and opinions to be under my control—I think that’s one of the most pressing issues in the digital world today, and I take it seriously.
