Appreciation of the mark-all-as-read button
The article praises the "mark all as read" button in RSS readers for enhancing user control and providing a distraction-free environment, contrasting it with the overwhelming nature of social media.
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The article expresses a strong appreciation for the "mark all as read" button in RSS readers, highlighting its role in providing a more controlled and less overwhelming media consumption experience compared to social media platforms. The author criticizes social media for its endless streams of content, which often lead to feelings of anxiety and FOMO (fear of missing out). In contrast, RSS allows users to manually refresh their feeds, ensuring that they only see new content when they choose to. The "mark all as read" feature further enhances this experience by allowing users to clear their feeds after reading, creating a sense of completion and control. The author emphasizes that RSS offers a distraction-free environment, free from algorithms, ads, and unwanted recommendations, allowing readers to engage with quality content created by individuals who care about their work. This approach is presented as a remedy to the chaos of modern social media, promoting a more intentional and fulfilling way to consume information.
- The "mark all as read" button in RSS enhances user control over content consumption.
- RSS provides a distraction-free environment compared to social media platforms.
- Users can manually refresh their feeds, avoiding feelings of FOMO.
- The article advocates for quality content created by individuals over algorithm-driven recommendations.
- RSS is positioned as a solution to the overwhelming nature of modern web consumption.
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11 commentsI use the excellent vore (vore.website) for rss and I just get a chronological list off my RSS feeds. My brain has a feature called "memory" that stops me accidentally reading any articles twice, and even better, I don't have a feeling of obligation to my rss feed reader.
That's a waste of a manual refresh action - if you only open the reader when you want to read something, there is no point in not auto-refreshing on open so you can... read something.
> I can mark everything as read and get back to a neutral state. And just like that, I’m done with my timeline. Isn’t that amazing?
Not really, you've described a workflow with the same "FOMO" and "chore" downsides: you have to invest time into reviewing the whole batch of downloaded content otherwise if you mark everything as read you fear you've missed something important that you haven't reviewed it. Some clients can even auto-mark links on scroll so you reduce the risk of mislabeling, but these are still not refined enough controls to tacke the issue.
(and yes, of course there are ads in RSS)
In Outlook, because I have so many folders due to sieve rules, I scroll to the bottom of my account where there is an unread emails view that I scroll through and mark the ones read that need to be, then right click the whole folder and hit mark all as read.
Then I just have to wait for 15 minutes as Outlook figures out how to synchronize all that!
K-9 at least on the 6.x version that I remain on so I don't get dragged into Thunderbird Mobile and it's nasty new UI, the only way to set something to appear in the unified inbox is to go folder by agonizing folder and add it, not something I want to spend the time to do, so I end up scrolling through folders and looking at messages manually.
Remembering the last thing you already been shown and not presenting it anymore is what computers used to do, back in the 1970s.
(a third advantage to RSS: because local storage is dirt cheap, it's searchable — even the stuff I'd mark-all-as-read'ed)
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