Internet Is Fun 
RSS never died, it just stopped being advertised. Most blogs, a lot of news sites and a surprising number of niche publications still publish a feed. What you get is a list of what you subscribed to, in order, with nothing added.
After a decade of recommendation feeds that is a strange experience. Here is how to set it up.
1. Pick a reader
Any of them will do. The differences are sync, interface and price, not capability. A web-based one is easiest to start with because there is nothing to install and it will be there on your phone too.
Do not spend long on this. Switching later is a single export file.
2. Find the feeds
Most readers will find the feed if you paste the siteβs normal address, so try that first. Failing that:
- Try adding
/feed,/rssor/feed.xmlto the siteβs address β this works on most WordPress sites, including this one - View source and search for
application/rss+xml - YouTube channels, Reddit subreddits and many newsletters all have feeds, usually undocumented
3. Start much smaller than you want to
The classic failure is subscribing to forty things in an afternoon, opening the reader to 900 unread items, and never going back.
Ten feeds is plenty. Add one when you find something good; remove one when you start skipping it.
4. Stop treating it as an inbox
The unread count is the thing that kills RSS habits. Most readers let you hide it, and doing so changes the whole experience β it becomes somewhere you go when you want something to read, rather than a queue with an obligation attached.
Mark all as read without guilt. It is not email.
5. Use folders for tempo, not topic
The useful split is not βtechβ and βcultureβ. It is how often things publish. A folder for the handful of sites you never want to miss, and a folder for the high-volume ones you skim occasionally, works far better than sorting by subject.
Why bother
Because it is the only remaining mainstream way to follow a small site reliably. If a blog you like posts twice a year, no platform will ever show it to you. A feed will.
It pairs well with the other discovery methods, and with search operators for the things you go looking for deliberately.
