Vicarious life, syndicated daily

[goldkin]

Did you know you could get awesome beamed directly to your brain?

Do you have any idea that you're missing your dragon-recommended allowance of art, cute, humor, and awesome from this wonderful thing called the Internet?



And your cure is simple: follow me on Google Reader.

More seriously, I've been using Reader for the past few years now, to chart my online travels through interesting links and nooks. I don't post any of that to my journal currently, because it'd be (mostly) redundant between the two feeds.

But I'd like to start using the results to fuel what I do post here. And since I use Reader to discover what y'all are interested in, I greatly appreciate any follows, likes, reshares, and comments you leave me there.


Who knows? It might get me writing about topics I find interesting, provided I can keep them at the level of light reading. Or it could get me to return to my old art habits and start painting again, instead of just doing 3D.

Those seem to be what garners the most interest right now. And any help guiding my efforts through vicarious awesome would be greatly appreciated.

It's not my only source, mind you. It just happens to be the easiest when I don't have comments or Googleables to go by.

Comments

[arethinn]

I'm so haphazard about clicking "share" at appropriate times, but I figure no one is following me anyway, so it hardly matters.

[goldkin]

Even if you have no followers, it pays to use the like, star, and sharing features of Reader. All of those fuel Sort by magic, which allows Reader to prioritize what it thinks you'll find interesting.*


Anyway, it'll mention if people are following you. If no one is, perhaps you should look for a community that shares your interests?

(I currently have a small collection of around 25 people. Reading their shares, reshares, and comments is quite helpful as a springboard for what they find interesting. It feels almost voyeuristic, but it's the most efficient system for me.)

--
* In practice, Reader is pretty good about sorting text articles. Obviously, it has more difficulty with image feeds or feeds without sufficient metadata.

[arcanetrivia]

All of those fuel Sort by magic, which allows Reader to prioritize what it thinks you'll find interesting.*

I only ever use "Sort by oldest" (I have a fairly elaborate subfolder system and want to read each folder oldest to newest, like I do email). I sometimes peruse "recommended items", which I know is also informed by my use of like/share/etc, but I view it as a novelty if I'm bored. I never use "Sort by magic".

Anyway, it'll mention if people are following you. If no one is, perhaps you should look for a community that shares your interests?

I neither want nor do not want people to follow me - it's just I figure no one is, so what I do doesn't matter.

[arethinn]

Err, sorry. Speaking of switching cookie profiles... bah.

[goldkin]

Whereas I had no idea. This bumps my interest in your writing up by about ten points, since I rather enjoy what you post with that account. :)

Which isn't implying I don't like your other writings. I just haven't gotten enough of a representative sample yet.

[arethinn]

Eh wha who wha? You didn't know arcanetrivia was me? Beware, there is porny Harry Potter slash on that account. lol.

[arethinn]

I guess actually what I mean is, I'm surprised you knew that account existed!

[goldkin]

How is this surprising? You contacted me using that account a little over half a year ago. :p

[arethinn]

... I totally don't remember? It doesn't seem like the kind of thing I would do, except by big mistake. I would have expected the connection to be through my LJ profile, if anywhere.

[baxil]

I want to follow you, but new-social-network buy-in is pretty onerous and that would be the only use of Reader for me. Does it export to, say, an rss feed that I can create an lj feed for and add to my flist?

[goldkin]

It's a main feature, yes. I didn't explicitly call it out, but you can easily pull the feed via RSS and shoehorn it into your LJ feed reader.

Which is part of why I split the two feeds in the first place. I figure interested parties can follow either source via RSS, so why have overlap? Unless I find something interesting enough to write about, anyway!