random sample

The Way I Use Things

thedancingelkclub:

I think the underlying tenet of my ability to use any one thing is that I am always in the mood for something, but rarely aware of what that is. Inanimate objects that understand this tend to stick around.

This is why I listen to shuffle on my iPod and recklessly destroy the battery by flicking through song after song after song until the iPod gives me what I didn’t know I wanted to hear. On a crowded tram I am always very aware of the amount of time spent clicking through songs in relation to everyone else’s stoic fingers and decisive playlists. It’s also why I no longer have any understanding of albums or track numbers or song names, only the difference between time appropriate music and music which may or may not be annoying.

This idea is also behind a revolution that recently took over my Google Reader. I used to organise by topic. It made sense, when I want to read about tech, I’ll read the tech blogs, when I want a comic, I’ll go to the comic section. Politics. Fashion. Music. Aside from all the problems that sites like Boing Boing create, it’s also an incredibly frustrating, relentless method of reading.

The reality of RSS feeds, and a lot of other things, is that there is no reading tech mood, there is only a constant mood to read something good, interesting, challenging, funny. I love my reader, but everyday that number in brackets grew and grew until it was out of control, in the 1000+ range, a defeat and a liability.

A number so high, a company whose name literally means a hundred zeros had no capacity to measure it. It was terrifying in its ambiguity and I was paralysed by a lack of information.

And so I left it, opened the cursed brower each morning and avoided the tab. I knew that Gawker and Gothamist and NYT were gathering their immense armies. I knew that there was no possible way they would reliquinsh their hold on the number, short of genocide, and the waste of that always weighed on me. The reader has graphs for these kinds of things, it would know. Not to mention how many brilliant articles, trivia pieces and important facts would be lost and never recovered. Sure, I could go back and read through them at my leisure, but no one actually has leisure, this would never happen.

It is always very easy to ignore the incestuous nature of the Internet.

And so a week ago I deleted all my tags and created new ones, A, B, C, D and New. A is for things that must be read immediately (Xkcd, Seth Godin, Freakonomics, Photoshop Disasters), B for things I will enjoy but can wait for (Lifehacker, Puddleblog, Vice) C for thing I’ll read if I have the time (Washington Post, The Sartorialist, Stereogum) and D is for that occasional rainy day.

The beauty of this system is that I only have to make a decision once. When new blogs are added they go into the New category and I have a week to figure out how important they are to me. We get to know each other. They tell me things. I might make a comment, or not, depends how comfortable they make me. Then they go where I think I might need them.

It means that I no longer have to be anxious each time I open the tab, wondering what I should read, and I no longer waste good posts on an intermittent mood. It means that I don’t have to feel guilty about my bloated Bricolage tag and all the untouched blogs languishing there. Now they simply head out to D, like a cat under the house, waiting to die.

Google Reader is now equipped to tell me what I want to know and for the first time, I might actually be able to use it efficiently, without fear of the trends graph.

It’s been a good day.

the internet probably shouldn’t be so frustrating.  or so pervasive.  it is, after all, a tool, not life.  at least, it wasn’t meant to be.