a small discovery feed experiment

26 Mar, 2025

last modified 2 months ago

I did a small thing and I wanted to talk about it and why I did it and some things I noticed because I did it. it's not a lot, but it's a thought

essentially, I realized I wasn't reading a lot of other bear blogs; I can access my usual RSS feed of people I follow (or something like it)¹ everywhere, but I'm not super motivated to check it on my phone. I like that it's on my computer, and anyway, I like to do different things on my computer and on my phone. I'm a different person depending on the orientation of my head, because of gravitational forces affecting the flow of my brain's juices, naturally

I also tend to really like "discovery" type zones online. I'm probably the only person who's enjoyed using the "for you" tumblr dashboard more than their regular dashboard, my obsession with my instagram discovery page was so bad I had to download an... alternate client and mod my app to eliminate the discovery button entirely, for my own mental health², and I needn't say anything about tiktok, we're all aware of its siren call lol

it's not entirely that algorythms hypnotize me, though they do also do that³. and it's also not entirely that I crave novelty to stave off boredom, and also not entirely that these apps disincentivize keeping up with your actual follows, for some reason, either (these are a lot of "not entirely"s...)

the truth is, I also like digital people-watching. analog too, I like observing strangers on the subway. my reasons for it are kinda complex, they're beyond the scope of this post (though I did end up writing about em, so maybe I'll post that? idk), but I like lookin'! I like seeing people build weird and interesting new stuff and use platforms in interesting ways! I like finding people with interests different than my own that still express it in a fun way, y'know? I don't think I'm alone in this lol

so when I remembered that bearblog has an universal RSS feed of all posts, I thought it might be a fun idea to subscribe to it on my phone. I didn't want to get constant notifications, nor to have a ton of homework whenever I turned my PC on, so just having a new reader app on my phone dedicated solely to this feed sounded fun, and so I did it!

the steps I followed are pretty simple. I downloaded a new RSS app I wasn't using (the "Feeder" app works wonders for my purposes so far), making sure push notifications weren't turned on. then I navigated to the bear discovery feed, sorted by "most recent", then filtered the pages by the languages I speak (spanish and english), and then I put the feeds into my phone. "feeder" has an option to "save" posts, so the ones I liked got "saved", too.

and that was it⁴!

I still don't have super definitive results of this little experiment, because I only set this system up recently, and I don't check on it every day, just whenever I remember it exists⁵. that said, I do have some notes:

• there is, in fact, spam on bearblog, but actually surprisingly little. and it was actually mostly the boring or funny kind, which is fine by me. I saw someone make a blog in I think arabic to post a pirate link to the entire Naruto OST, which is hysterical

• some people post stuff I really don't care about or even find annoying. mostly it's people who post super dense illegible technical stuff about machine learning (I'm a lit major!!). there's also some people who are saying things I think I probably agree with, but they say it in an annoying way (irreconcilable difference, of course, my army shall attack at dawn). my solution so far has been to just ignore them, because it's never actually offended me or anything yet (beyond the aesthetic, which is obviously super grave lol), but there is a tool for filtering out specific blogs through these discovery RSS feeds, which is kind of like blocking, in case I wanna do that

• there's a lot less posts per hour on bear than I'd imagined. it's still enough that I'm glad to not get notifications, but there's like, a twenty-minute gap between posts, sometimes. and posts are slow enough reaching their readers on here that this information is useless, too - I'd normally say something like, "peak time to post if you want eyeballs on your stuff", but if PopCrave or Liza Minelli Outlives had a scoop here, the headstart would be pretty meaningless, since everyone would read their post around the same time as a bunch of others, possibly on the same subject. most bear users probably prefer this speed, but I feel like that verges on saying something like, "most goth people prefer goth music"; that's why they're here, right? at the metaphorical goth club⁶?

• there's a lot of people setting up posts as pages who didn't make them undiscoverable. not a big deal, I don't even think it breaches unspoken etiquette rules because almost nobody's tracking the full feed, it's just kind of an option, I think. though it was funny - there was a blog, I don't wanna be super specific about what exactly they posted because it'd be easily findable, so what I'm gonna say is that the blog was very positive about the internet and computers in a way that reminded me of Serial Experiments Lain or maybe of Grimes, and this happened to them, and it was gap moe, to me

• there's also a lot of variety in how people use bear! some people have blogs for super specific subjects, while others have blogs that are more generalistic. some people are super anonymous, and some will readily share things like names and life experiences. some people make long long long posts, while some micro-blog the way they would on twitter. some people use themes I recognize, while some people have customized theirs a bunch. people blog about travel, food, art, their jobs, their pets, their families, all sorts of stuff. I even saw someone who posted full translations they did of japanese light/web(?) novels, chapter by chapter. (I didn't have time to catch up, but I saved one of their posts because hey, free web fiction! I can't say no~)

• there's a bunch of users posting in japanese or stuff related to the japanese language, too. I don't speak japanese, so I don't specifically seek out content in japanese or related to the language, but I have seen a bunch of it anyway - I'm not complaining, it's really cool, it's just surprisingly specific that it's this one language. (or maybe I'm noticing it more than other languages for... reasons you can probably deduce from the rest of this post, lol? who's to say)

• on the subject of themes, boy do a lot of people not have dark modes for their blogs lol. or maybe they're just not triggering correctly because of some settings stuff on my client? not sure. I don't have a dark mode for my own blog, but it's because I don't have a light mode, at least currently. (you can let me know if the current color combo is amenable to your eyes, I can see about making a light mode if it's necessary). like in many debates, I'm an "it depends" kinda guy about the light mode vs. dark mode thing⁷, I don't think it's a requirement or anything, but I do keep a lot of phone stuff in dark mode, and sometimes it's a bit of a jumpscare lol, like turning your phone on at full brightness in the middle of the night. kinda hilarious though

• there's a lot of people setting up their blogs, which I think is neat! a signal of growth or something like that. here's to hoping most of them keep up with their blogging, lord knows I haven'tttttt... (<-shaaaaaaame)

• there's some really odd stuff out and about? like, just odd, not bad, or at least not necessarily. not gonna delve into this for obvious reasons, not in the least because I actually like seeing very sincere odd stuff out there (again, part of why I set this whole thing up) and shining a big bright light on it would be rude and even aggressive, I think. not my style. but it's good to know there's people out there sharing stuff I don't quite understand, not for being dense but for being... out of context, is what I'd call it?

• and there's a couple people posting really personal stuff, a lot of which is venting about genuinely shit circumstances... & kind of obviously, I hope things get better for them. life sucks sometimes, and sharing platitudes in a blog post doesn't do much to change that, I don't think. what helps is actual help and also being given the chance to change the shit in one's life that's hurting you - and I'm not, uh, necessarily in control of that happening for them. ...but I'm hoping very sincerely they get those things!!

• actually, additional note here - if you're reading this and what I'm about to propose sounds useful to you, feel free to shoot me a cold e-mail mentioning this post and complaining about your day or your life. I genuinely derive joy from being the greek chorus to people's complaints. and you can reply whenever, wherever, about whatever - no worries about taking two weeks or months or even replying at all, if you don't want to. let the onus fall on me! if I don't like the conversation topic, I'll let you know, and if I don't wanna respond, I won't, and this won't be on you, it'll be a choice I made. I think that's a fun deal... (it would be fun for me, at least)

• honestly, just shoot me a cold email if you wanna do it. I'm terrible at starting conversations but I do like talking to people, I'm just... y'know. terrible at starting conversations

• actually PLEASE send me an email with tips to start conversations if you got 'em. I will actually fucking use them in my real life if I'm convinced by them lmfao

okay shit that got personal. I'm really hungry _irl so I should probably like. go and eat dinner and stop writing. but so far these have been my observations about bear! not a lot more

I'm working on a couple actual posts, I've got a really big one about The Summer Hikaru Died and philosophy of language that I'm gonna try to get out before uni starts back up, and in case that one doesn't work out too well or takes a while, I've got a bunch of semi-shareable thoughts about different shonen mangas I've been keeping up with. I still haven't started those tabletop rpg log posts I intended to write on this blog, but I'm hoping they'll be something I can start hammering away at sooner rather than later

& thank you, as usual, for reading!!

#🌕