In an age where the internet insists on feeding us content through algorithms—endless, noisy, and rarely nourishing—I find myself continually returning to a quiet, dependable companion: RSS. It isn’t flashy, it doesn’t trend, and it certainly doesn’t send push notifications at three in the morning. But it does something precious: it gives you content you actually asked for, in the order it was published, with no interference.
That’s why I’ve been quietly (and sometimes not so quietly) advocating for better RSS support. Not because I’m nostalgic for 2005, but because RSS represents a kinder, saner way of being online. It respects your attention. It doesn’t cajole, it doesn’t manipulate. It simply delivers the writing, podcasts, or updates you’ve chosen—no more, no less.
Fastmail, in particular, has made this practice almost seamless for me. By piping RSS feeds straight into email (using FeedPigeon), I can treat them like any other correspondence: sorted, labelled, and read on my own terms. It’s a subtle but powerful shift. My “feeds” aren’t another infinite scroll of distraction, but a curated stream of voices I care about—folded neatly into the same system I use to maintain Inbox Zero.
RSS is the antidote to the lie that we need to be spoon-fed content by algorithms. It’s slow, intentional, and wonderfully indifferent to virality. And that’s exactly why we should be advocating for it. The web should not merely be consumed—it should be chosen.
So yes, I’ll keep making the case for RSS. It’s not glamorous, but it is civilised. And in a world that thrives on noise, perhaps the most radical thing we can do is embrace the tools that help us listen, carefully and on our own terms.