Famously, for years I have read every single blog post in NetNewswire, every tweet on Twitter (when that website existed), and every toot on Mastodon for the websites and accounts that I follow. It was sort of a disease that I couldn’t shake. I felt like I had to read every single one.
That is, until recently.
After a long week away I found myself struggling to catch up. And I tried. I really value the insight and experiences of all the people and accounts that I follow across the web. I’ve learned so much from them. But if it stops being fun or valuable and causes me stress I thought it would be good to reevaluate my process.
I’ve taken social media breaks several times. And when I do, I declare a bit of bankruptcy rather than trying to catch up after a month or more away. Each social media break I’ve taken I found worthwhile.
Recently, though, I’ve just given up completely on the idea that I can catch up. So I think I’m over the habit of even trying to read every single post.
For the last several months, I’ve not been keeping up on reading RSS feeds or Mastodon. I fall far behind and then quickly skim the entire timeline to pick out things to read. But even that practice I’m starting to eliminate.
In NetNewswire I’ve refactored my previous setup. I used to keep folders of feeds called “Trialing” and “Subscribed”; if a feed was valuable enough for a long enough period of time it would be moved from “Trialing” into the “Subscribed” folder. Or it would be deleted. These days, I changed to a “Some posts” and “Every post” folder. The “Every post” folder is very, very small selection of feeds. So for all feeds I either read some posts or every post. And I’m slowly whittling those away.
I’ve completely given up trying to read every toot. So now I use the official Mastodon iOS application or the website (I’m no longer subscribed to Ivory as development of that app has seemed to stagnate) and I open it occasionally and read the most recent few posts and then move on with my day.
I have no desire at all to use any apps that combine multiple network feeds together. As Dave Winer would constantly remind everyone; that is what RSS is for! We don’t need all these apps! But, no one listens.
I am sort of hoping my addiction (I guess I’m willing to call it that) to social media is totally gone. I can drop in from time-to-time, see what is going on, and drop out. It is likely how everyone else uses it anyway and how I likely should have been using it all along.