I’ve been writing a lot about blogging during Blaugust, but I’m fascinated by the whys and hows of why people write and read blogs. Back when Blaugust first started, I wrote about how I subscribed to every Blaugust participant’s RSS feed. I’ve weeded quite a few out since then (people who don’t capitalize their letters, and ones that just aren’t my style), but I still have almost 150 new feeds that are seemingly constantly updated.

But for every good thing there is a bad. In this case, I now have nearly 4000 new posts to read in my FreshRSS reader. I could mark them all as read, but I hate doing that. If I subscribe to something, I want to read it. Marking something as read when I didn’t actually read it, or at least see what it was about, is a bit icky for me. It feels like a waste. Like, why did I bother subscribing if I wasn’t going to read the stuff that comes through the feed?

That’s from my post about subscribing to so many RSS feeds. Since then, I’ve had to rethink things quite a bit. There’s just not enough time in the day to read all the blog posts that are being put out. Maybe when Blaugust is over, things will slow down, and it’ll be easier. But for now, I can get my count for blogs down to zero and then refresh and there will be 20-30 new posts. I can never catch up.

So, what I’ve had to do is start being judgy (definitely a word) about what I read. And I do this in the most scientific way possible: I read the title. I am in fact judging a blog post by what is essentially its cover. Maybe everyone does this? I mean, they probably do. Nobody has the whole “feel like I’m losing out” thing going on if they don’t read everything. But for me, this is new. Oh, I’d always read the title first, but when I just had 20 subscriptions, I read everything, even if the title didn’t draw me in. Now, if the title isn’t catchy or about something I’m interested in, I usually pass it by.

This has been a process. I still feel that icky feeling when I pass by dozens of posts without reading a single one. I’ve compensated for this by reading some of the ones I pass by, and if the writing isn’t my thing or if the topic really isn’t something I’m interested in, I just unsubscribe from the RSS feed. I’ve weeded out quite a few more blogs this way. As time goes on, there will be more that I’ll leave behind too.

My point in writing this is twofold. Bloggers should try to do a good job on their titles. And second, it’s okay as a reader to not read something. May not be news for everyone else, but I feel like I have to constantly remind myself that it’s okay to be choosy.

This is day 20 of Blaugust 2025.