Normally I find myself in total agreement with whatever Marco Arment says–after all, the guy came up with Instapaper–so I was surprised to find myself really irritated by his piece a couple of weeks ago on the Proper Way to use RSS feeds. His post came in response to an article by Jacqui Cheng in Ars Technica, on the dangers of becoming addicted to RSS:

The first time I went without RSS in August, I simply went around to three or so of what I consider to be the best sites to get the latest news from. I combined that with my usual e-mail communications (tips from readers, conversations with PR folks from different companies, interviews already in progress, etc.) and my regular scans of Twitter in order to figure out what was going on during the day. It was stress-free, and I never felt like I was missing anything—I knew that if something truly important or controversial blew up, I’d hear about it instantly via Twitter and our loyal readers.

The next day when I loaded up my feeds, there were literally thousands of items piled up from the day before. (“Wow, I really comb through this much crap in a day? It looks so different when it’s all smashed together like this,” was the first thought that went through my head.) And when I ended up sifting through them all, I realized that I hadn’t missed a single story doing things the “old fashioned” way—rather, by following all these feeds, I was instead seeing hundreds of iterations on the same handful of stories. And I was wasting time going through them all day long.

This is what Arment had to say:

RSS is a great tool that’s very easy to misuse. And if you’re subscribing to any feeds that post more than about 10 items per day, you’re probably misusing it. I don’t mean that you’re using it in a way it wasn’t intended — rather, you’re using it in a way that’s not good for you.

You should be able to go on a disconnected vacation for three days, come back, and be able to skim most of your RSS-item titles reasonably without just giving up and marking all as read. You shouldn’t come back to hundreds or thousands of unread articles.

I’ve talked before about technological determinism, and how technology only serves the purpose you want it to serve. If you find yourself blaming social networks or smartphones for having taken over your life, well, then it’s probably time to take a look at where your accountability really lies.

So while I agree with Arment that the onus is on you to make sure a piece of technology doesn’t take over your life the way Cheng described, I was still surprised to see Arment adopt a prescriptivist view of how to use RSS. His model might work very well for his life, but surely, he can see that that’s not the only way in which RSS can be used?

My workflow is obviously a lot different from Arment’s, and I think my purpose in my daily internet check-in is different, too. He, like Cheng, needs to keep abreast of the major developments in his industry so he can participate in the conversation and make informed decisions. He can get away with hitting a couple of major tech sites, checking up on his social media, and then subscribing to a few rarely updated blogs for more in-depth analysis. In his case, it makes sense why he might not need to subscribe to Tech Crunch AND Ars Technica AND the New York Times tech section AND Buzz Feed and and and…

But that’s not why or how I use RSS, and I imagine that’s not how a lot of people use RSS. As he suggests, I use social media sites like Twitter and Google+ to keep me up-to-date on breaking news…but I’ve got lots of interests in lots of different fields, some of them quite niche, and RSS is simply the easiest way for me to discover new things in all of those different fields.

For example: my Google reader features updates about:

• The writing and publishing industry
• Art and design
• Fashion
• WordPress development and web technology
• Social issues, especially GLBTQ activism and feminism
• Sociology research and analysis
• Political and economic analysis from a few people whose opinions I respect
• Tumblrs I don’t want getting lost in the dashboard
• About 15 different webcomics
• Tech analysis (including Arment, Gruber, Siegler, Ford, etc.)
• Actual pieces of fiction
• Curiosities from around the Internet
• Fandom and gamer culture
• The various blogs of all my friends

Some of these blogs update every week. Some update every day. Some of these blogs, like Neatorama and Ars Technica and The Mary Sue, update a lot, on the order of 30+ a day. Hell, some of the art Tumblrs I subscribe to update 30+ an hour. But that’s okay, because I know the nature of each blog I subscribe to, and it’s easy for me to flip through everything quickly and save anything I want to keep for later, or to mark everything in a feed as ‘read’ if I’m just not that interested in what they have to say that day.

Before I consolidated all of my online reading into Google Reader, I had a bookmark bar full of websites I checked constantly. Anytime I had a browser open, I would cycle through the 10 or 15 websites to see if there were any updates I missed. Now I check Google Reader every couple of hours and flip through the most important things, which frees up my attention in the meantime to write indignant blog posts.

I have around 150 subscriptions. A day away from Reader for me means at least 3-400 unread items, compared to Arment’s 25. But unlike Arment, I don’t see that as a problem, nor do I see judicious use of ‘mark all as read’ as an emotionally unhealthy mechanism. I can safely ignore my post-happy feeds for design blogs and entertainment blogs and still read insightful analysis from my favourite writers, even if some of them, like Gruber, might update 10+ times a day. I’m pretty careful about trimming my subscriptions, but given that I care about, and want to care about, a whole variety of different things, I just can’t imagine adopting Arment’s model of using Google Reader and manually checking the major hubs for each of these subgenres.

Furthermore, right now my Twitter mostly comprises friends, with a few bots interspersed. Even if I added two relevant Twitterers per topic, my Twitter feed would be totally overwhelmed. I would feel the need to check in on Twitter all the time, I would miss updates from people I actually know, and there would be no easy way of differentiating important tweets from those that aren’t. (Let’s face it: the ‘lists’ feature is pretty poorly implemented.)

I do have to clarify that Arment rightly acknowledges that only checking major hubs and social media sites can result in a bit of an echo chamber. He argues that this is why you subscribe to those rarely updated but important blogs that’ll provide a different perspective, which I agree with. I just don’t think that that’s the only thing you should be allowed to subscribe to. Furthermore, I don’t use any sort of desktop Reader or social media app, but I can see why someone else would want to, and I don’t begrudge them that. To say that my way is the way and that I know what’s best for your work flow? Well, hardly.

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It’s said that anytime you find yourself passionate and defensive about something, you should slow down and examine your dogmas and prejudices. I admit that I am perhaps being more vitriolic about Arment’s post than it really warranted. He, after all, did not mean any personal judgment when he talked about RSS abuse. Still, I’m a big believer of living and let live; stay away from my internet habits and I won’t snark about yours.

That said, the fact that Arment’s dream computer set-up for a home office mirrors my dream set-up exactly, down to all the reasoning for his choices, means that he’s still a stone cold genius about most things…which is why his blog is in the ‘always read’ folder in my Google Reader.