Storytelling through RSS feeds

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 18:20:34 +0800

I have to jot down this thought before it’s gone.

I’ve been using RSS feeds for a while. Most of the time I subscribed to tech stuff like HackerNews and Lobsters. A lot of the news are talking about AI, programming languages, hardware, and occasionally some debatable takes from random blogs. While this does cater to my interests, it’s far from perfect. Then I stumbled upon this blog post on HackerNews. In this blog post, he explained how he reflected upon himself and why he stopped following daily news through his RSS feeds. I found this part rather interesting:

One thing I am still interested in is what is happening in my city. For that, I recently discovered a newsletter from Die Zeit called Elbvertiefung. Every weekday at 6 AM, they send a short newsletter about what happened in Hamburg, and sometimes they also recommend a book or a new restaurant or cafe. I start my day by reading it. Since it is in German, it also helps me improve my language skills.

This kind of newsletter is really great if you want to live a slow and calm life. I was thinking to myself, why don’t we take a step further and build a simple world/city/town/whatever that is pleasant to live, then we can push the news through RSS feeds so anyone who subscribe can act like it’s real. The news can be every single day, or thrice a week to inform people what is happening around the (fake) town. The world building should be convincing and the people should feel like they are living in it.

Traditional, linear storytelling (i.e. novels, comic books, anime) and even interactive storytelling (i.e. visual novels, games) are cool, but in the world filled with trash contents, ragebaits, and terrible news all around, why don’t we take advantage and use a small part of the internet to create some sort of (fake) utopia that make use of the technology available at our disposal? This is probably just another storytelling technique, but I thought this might be interesting especially for people who are chronically online like me to indulge in some sort of fiction worlds aside of reading or watching traditional media.

I am not sure if there is anyone who already done something like this, but this could be a fun small creative project. If there are actually anything like this, I would like to subscribe to their feeds.

All aboard the micro.blog train

Thu, 08 Jan 2026 13:07:03 +0800

2026 is probably the year I should start writing again, before this ability turning into dust due to English not being my first language and the last time I write long essays/stories was probably around 2016. That’s solid 10 years. I chose micro.blog because there is no pressure to get everything right and I can better articulate myself. Most importantly, there is no need to fight the mighty algorithms and followers count. It’s all freestyle writing here.

I recently got into Indie Web movement where people went back to the original web, the one that corporations played only small part of. Being someone who had a chance experiencing both Old and New webs, I would rather go back to the original web when everything actually have personality and identity. Many people don’t realize that their Internet life is dictated by algorithms set by the same five apps they used, as oppose to browsing with intention. I fell into the same trap; I used to mindlessly browsing Instagram reels for hours and sending memes to people. Granted, you get easy dopamine from those activities, but your life will stagnant faster than you thought.

This year, I’m trying to reduce as much as possible my screen time on the platforms owned by corporations (i.e. Reddit, X/Twitter, Facebook) and start to actually surf with intentions and discover stuff without mighty al_god_rithms bestowed upon my life. I collected some RSS feeds and started a blog (this one!). I also have personal website at zerocchi.com just to stamp my presence on the small corner of the Internet. I gradually moved away from Google Mail and started using different mail providers. The more you decouple from platforms owned by corporations, the liberating you will feel.

YouTube and Discord are the only platforms I can’t move from yet. There are no solid replacements for YouTube so far, but you can always search videos with intent instead of depending on algorithms to feed content to you. For Discord, as much as I want to use something like IRC, it’s probably tricky to ask my buddies to move away as Discord is probably the better IRC. But, I believe the old web will stage a comeback so long the corporations continue to deteriorate their products and offerings.

Takes on Zerocchi Blog

Storytelling through RSS feeds

All aboard the micro.blog train