After many years, I've finally started using an RSS reader again. As someone who prefers medium-to-long form writing, I'm wondering why I ever stopped! It's reinvigorated my online reading.

RSS is just the perfect way for me to follow other people's writing. Mailing list notifications tend to get in the way; I don't necessarily want to deal with those emails when I get them, and if I put them aside, they tend to get lost or pile up, until I delete them wholesale in a fit of "tidying up." Single-threaded chronological feeds, like the Wordpress Reader, or Micro.blog (or Twitter or Mastodon, if you follow microblogs), don't work as well for people (like me) who don't live on the feed, and they also disadvantage writers who post less frequently.

But with my RSS reader (I use Reeder), I can check in when I feel like it, and see everyone who's posted since the last time, and easily pick what I want to read, and from whom. It's great.

And bonus -- I can follow YouTube channels! As someone who makes a point of not staying continuously logged into my Google account, this is a plus.

Of course, whether I should be spending my relatively limited reading time budget on online reading, rather than books, is another question.