I still read your posts, and I still read your writings, but I don't read your blog. Don't hate me.
It's your own fault. You placed this link on your blog which allowed me to steal all your posts, both past and future, and drag them away to a viewingplatformof my ownchoosing. I've not been back since.
It might have taken me a while to find your magic button. Some people hide it away in the lower reaches of their sidebar. Some people use a textlink rather than a ripply orange icon. Others pretend they don't have a feed at all, whereas the address is often obvious when I stop and think. Wherever you conceal your import link, I can track it down and then spirit your words away. Once I have your RSS feed within my clutches, then your content is mine.
I can sit here with my RSS reader and conjure up your latest posts without you ever knowing. I can read your every word whilst leaving behind no footsteps to show I was ever there. And the entire process is nigh instant too. My blogfeed reader can spot your most recent post almost as soon as you've published it, rather than me eventually stumbling on it hours or even days later. My blog consumption is now passive rather than active - you come to me rather than me going to you.
It's quick, and it's easy. Just a steady stream of intermittent incoming posts and none of the surrounding clutter. Format-stripped text and shrunken-down images, nothing more. Never mind if you've given your template a refreshing spring clean, I'll never see it. Never mind if you've updated your blogroll or rejigged your archive, I won't notice. Never mind if you've embedded adverts all over your blog to entrap the unwary surfer, I'll be oblivious. And never mind if you're building up some really interesting comment threads at the foot of what you've written, I can't be bothered to click through and interact.
So look, I apologise. You go to all the effort of designing a perfectly configured blog template, all elegant curves and content-packed sidebar, and I ignore it. You write erudite posts laid out in some tasteful font, and I read your words in size 8 default text. You write your posts in sequence, in carefully-considered context, and I read them in disjoint chunks floating amidst random posts from other subscribers. Sorry, I'm behaving badly.
Yes, it's damned lazy of me. Yes, I should interact with you more than I do. I still feel a pang of guilt every time I read one of your posts at a distance, because I know I'm giving nothing back. I should try to remember to click through a bit more often, just to see what you're really up to. But at least I'm regularly reading every post you write, which wasn't necessarily the case in the pre-RSS era. And I'm smiling at what I read, and enjoying what I see. You win some, you lose some.
on your blog which allowed me to steal all your posts, both past and future, and drag them away to a viewing platform of my own choosing. I've not been back since.
