Feeds are a bit of a nightmare

I believe feeds are a problem, for me. Youtube subscriptions and it's dread start page/recommendation black hole. Instagram & Facebook & Reddit with the infamous infinite scroll. Don't get me going on the meme onslaught. Mastodon (never used Twitter), Lemmy. Matrix, Discord, Codeberg/Github/Gitlab, Signal. The sheer amount of online tchatter.

It hit me pretty early on during my journey with tech objects, when I got my first smartphone. After a few years using smartphones, I started to notice that I was spending a whole lot of time on it, watching videos and other

My parents were pretty scrict. They resisted as long as they could. But I first got a portable phone when I was abroad as an exchange in secondary school. Later, I finaly got a smarphone. It was my mum's old Samsung Galaxy SII.

Even if I managed to negotiate for a smartphone, I still had constraints to my usage. I had a pretty cheap mobile plan, that only allowed for 50Mb per month. We didn't have Wifi at home, thus I couldn't use my phone with in

I sometimes read in blogs and comments that it's difficult to discern good stuff from the noise. I feel that is true for me. Even search engines are filled with what feels to me like irrelevant ads and listicles (list + articles).

SO I endearvoured to change how I consume content online. But not by removing feeds, but by changing how I access feeds. I stopped using services that had content that was served to me via recommandation algorithms.
I deleted my Youtube account. I nearly quit Facebook (marketplace and groups are still usefull, but am working on alternatives to events -> mobilizon). I nearly quit Instagram, reinstalled it a couple of times but never stayed long, seing how «addictive» it could get. I had a similar problem with microblogging. Just not my cup of tea, thankfully.

Instead, I started using rss feeds and feed readers. I curated my list of blogs I followed (also known as a blogroll) and looked for rss.xml and atom.xml everywhere I could. Newspapers, Youtube Channels, Podcasts. I diligently followed Hacker News feeds. I even got feeds from github etc for updates on software I used.

I selfhost my feed reader service. It's an instance of Miniflux. Before that I used the News Reader app in Nextcloud. It was okay but Miniflux is small, has a relatively simple interface and is fast.

I was proud of having MASTERED the INTERNET FEEDS of DOOM.

Here is the catch. I have on average 2000+ entries in my feed reader.

Yes, it's great that it's mostly in one place. Yes, it's great that it's mostly textual information. Yes, I selfhost and have data sovreignty. But it's just too much. I can't seem to catch up.

Worst, I try to handle so much that I also have complexe browser tabs management systems to be able to open as many links as possible. But I still end up with 2000 tabs «opened» on my laptop. Which is a lot. Even when I manage to stop them from freezing my computer, there is just no way I can read through them without sacrificing a whole lot of time. Time that I could have for friends and family, IRL projects, etc.

I believe this has an effect on my attention span and browsing habits. I'm prone to very quickly change tabs and thus subjects. This makes it harder for me to concentrate, both for long periods of time and deepen my understanding of the subject of my attention.

Furthermore, I'm plagued with this idea that I have to read the entirety of my feeds. It's both because of FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) and a weird completioniste mindset. Interesingly enough, this is not much of problem in video games. I only need to finish the main story to feel at ease with leaving the game.