I ran across this (very well done) post on hating RSS feeds yesterday.

It’s really well done and I appreciate the underlying notion: rss feeds can feel like “work” to be done.

But I’ve always viewed them as a buffet from which I can sample. Not as a task list. A place to graze.

I have absolutely no desire to consume everything on the buffet. Yes, I have some things I’ll eat nearly every time. But in general, it’s a broad selection from which I can sample, depending on my mood. I have no obligation to eat it all, and in fact, that might be considered unreasonable.

The stuff I always put on my plate first is in one folder. The stuff I don’t eat that regularly goes into another folder, from which I only occasionally peak. I even have feeds from my friends' blogs that I never read, as they’re not on topics I care about, or are a bit too influencer-y for my tastes. But I’ll occasionally pop in to mark those as read, giving me a second or two to scan for a (rare) life update or something surprisingly interesting.

There’s simply too much to consume in the modern era to ever consider some grouping of content as a task list. If your default is to view that as such, I think you’re going to feel especially overwhelmed in the modern world.