This is sort of a counterpoint to @grayruby's recent post, How Many Stackers Do You Subscribe To?, although I had already been planning on making it. It is also a follow up to my post, The Zen of Hiding Zap Notifications.
The experience of Stacker News can be hectic, cluttered, and prescripted, if we let it, but it can also be exploratory, surprising, and delightful.
When I first came to Stacker News, I didn't know anyone by nym. I had no subscriptions to tell me what I should read. I scanned through headlines, finding things that peaked my curiosity. I was rarely distracted by notifications. It was a veritable Age of Discovery.
Along the way, I eventually gravitated towards certain writers and didn't want to miss out on anything they wrote. That seemed natural enough, especially when some were in other parts of the world and write posts that might get buried before I see them.
That landed me in a state where I was mostly just keeping up with my subscriptions. Though the authors were still making great content, I was no longer discovering it. It was being delivered automatically. That feels different, in a meaningful way.
I took the plunge and unsubscribed from almost everything. Now, I'm back to wandering around the Wild West and stumbling upon items of interest.
The now legendary Stacker @elvismercury liked to talk about Ephemerality and Evergreen-ness. There's value to both, no doubt, but there's something nice about catching an ephemeral post before it disappears, rather than just catching up on a reading queue.
originally posted at