I have a habit of insisting RSS is great and that people should be using it, then making no follow-up effort to explain how that's done or why. This is meant as a clear, actionable guide to getting started with RSS feeds if you're not even sure what they are.
Only the fruits, no vegetables.
Put persuasively, RSS is a better way to keep up with most anything online. It's a vestige of old web optimism from before executives understood how little the average netizen expects so long as they get porn and circuses.
RSS may be for you if you're...
If any of these vague emotional appeals are working, at least do yourself the courtesy of skimming this to see if it sounds useful.
Step one:
You'll need software on whatever device you're using, either a desktop program, mobile app, or browser extension. This is what you'll open to check your feeds. Here are some options:
Feeder for Android (Samsung, Pixel, Huawei, etc.)
NetNewsWire for Apple Devices (iPhone, iPad, Mac)
RSS Guard for Windows, Linux, and Mac
Poke around your newly installed RSS reader until you find the option to "add a feed" (it may even offer suggestions). Let's add The Hard Times, a punk-themed satirical news site. Their feed URL is https://thehardtimes.net/feed/
Just paste that in the right spot, press OK, and boom: all the latest Hard Times headlines. What a bunch of knee-slappers! You can even click/tap on them and make your way to the full article. Groundbreaking!
But we've got to dream bigger than one feed.
How about you add the site you're reading right now? (Don't worry; this is a rhetorical performance, not self-promotion.) (Unless..?)
My URL is https://ardea.smol.pub/atom.xml
Add that in your RSS client and bam: you get my blog and The Hard Times presented together. Now you're cooking with crazy!
For real tho... pause for a second and think about what's you've done.
You've set up one place on your device to check for updates from two unrelated websites, without making any new accounts, seeing any ads, or giving out your email address or credit card numbers.
Still not sold? I've got one more trick up my sleeve.
This part has taken me the longest to write by far, because I have to concisely pitch you the entire internet. I don't want to throw the phonebook at your head, but I want to you sense of the possibilities.
Let's start with the news. Believe it or not, there are still countless journalists diligently reporting on the world (with varied intentions and results). Most news sites (even independent ones) will have at least one feed. Big networks often have multiple, split by category, region, or sport.
Then there's online magazines for most every niche, spanning the gamut from *news with perspective* to *influencers with masthead*. These are basically fancy blogs, so they're perfect for RSS.
Some publish on Medium or Substack, both of which provide feeds. As do YouTube channels, Tumblr blogs, Mastodon and Bluesky accounts, and subreddits, for that matter. If a website is built around blog-style updates, there's a good chance it's quietly writing those updates to an RSS feed. (Wordpress, Wix, and Drupal do it by default, if you know what any of those are.)
Then there's all the other internet titbits... weather forecasts and warnings, phases of the moon, Wikipedia articles and images of the day, webcomics, smut, podcasts, keyword alerts, recipes, and who knows what else.
Imagine a curated feed full of actual information and entertainment, not just evocative stimulus and promotional excerpts, where you can take in headlines at a glance and choose what you want to put your attention and data towards, whether it be short-, medium-, or long-form content.
No, it won't fix the lingering malaise of your life, but it will probably make your scroll an awful lot more pleasant, and help you stay more on top of the information you actually care about.
This is where we get into the vegetables, so I'll be brief and send you on your way.
There's not one trick for finding RSS feeds. (I've actually been using RSS as a catch-all term for a few different formats. It can all be a bit confusing if you aren't expecting it.)
Sometimes, if you're lucky, adding "/rss" or "/feed" to a website's URL is enough to reveal a feed. Failing that, websites like *www.rsslookup.com* and browser extensions like *RSS Feed URL Finder* can check a few common spots for you. Failing that, entering the name of the website plus "rss feed" in your favoured search engine can yield results, though you'll have to pick through all the services asking you to make an account to generate bespoke feeds.
I hope that's enough to get you started. Let me know if you have any questions or corrections. Peace.