You can follow this blog through RSS and Mastodon if you’re so inclined.

Hey, what’s RSS anyway?

Ever wondered how to follow websites without being subjected to ads, trolls, nazis or other pitfalls of social media? It’s the secret scaffolding of the internet and you’ll unlock something like a superpower by using it.

Most websites have something called an RSS feed. It’s basically a file that lists all posts of a site in a machine-readable format. You can take the link to that file and shove it into an app to start following that site.

My RSS feed can be found at https://marcel.io/feed. When you paste this address into an RSS reader app of your choice (I recommend Reeder) you’ll be notified as soon as something new pops up. It’ll even work without the /feed part. Most RSS reader apps are smart like that and can find the feed by themselves.

When I quit social media for two years I used RSS to keep up with what’s happening. I subscribed to sites like The Verge, Polygon, Daring Fireball, Ars Technica and spent a couple of minutes a day to check what’s new. It’s kind of relaxing and far less grueling than getting information on Twitter or Instagram.