Blake is the New “Cranky Old Man”
June 15th, 2005Without realizing it, Walt has passed the “I’m old and cranky” baton over to Blake. In his post, Blake talks about his continued love/hate relationship with RSS:
“People seem really excited about the ability to read a billion blog posts on one page. This one I can understand. The urge to read what hundreds of people are writing about is understandable. So, it’s not that I don’t understand, it’s that I don’t care. I don’t care if I missed another link, another story or another thought from the blogosphere. I think I keep up with the people I enjoy reading fairly well most of the time and that’s good enough for me. I suppose I’m on the supply side of RSS, and I’ve never felt the need to be a hyper-consumer of RSS. If I spend more than a few minutes a day reading blogs I always feel like I’m wasting my time. I don’t mean to sound like an arrogant bastard again, but I really do have better things to do. I know I’m missing things, I know there’s tons of good stuff being written, and I know I can learn a lot, but I just don’t have the time. Yes it might just be ironic that LISNews offered some of the first RSS feeds, and yes it may be ironic I also run a web site that aggregates RSS feeds. And let me just say because it’s not for me doesn’t mean it’s wrong. There’s nothing wrong with you having a million feeds in your aggregator, it just doesn’t currently fit in with how I use the web at this point in my life. For now I’ll just keep working to make sure you have something to read in your aggregator.”
This is why I love Blake. He’s always honest and, while not seeing the possible virtues of some technologies (He doesn’t understand tabs in browsers), he is always quick to say something like, “It may work for you, but not me.”
I’m making a conscious effort to buy into the “different strokes” theory (and I think I’m progressing well), but every now and then I fall off the wagon and say something grandiose like, “listservs are dead.” Thank goodness my colleagues call me on this and discussion ensues.
For the record, I still think listervs will die…pass me a cold one Walt…please…I need my fix.