The whole point of RSS readers was to make our life easier, but all they seem to do is hang over my head like a quietly reproachful teacher who had been expecting great things from me, but recently discovered that I'd downloaded all my essays off the internet. There they sit, quietly collating all the feeds from all the websites I like to read, offering up mute evidence of my own inadequacies. "You have 14,821 unread entries", they remind me every time I log in, at which point I feel the first stages of a panic attack come seeping over me, and hastily close the lid of my laptop. Once I've had a little lie down, breathed into a paper bag a few times and chanted a few affirmations, I return to my laptop only to have the process repeat itself.
You see, no matter how hard I try, I just cannot keep up with all the stuff people are churning out . It's like the entire world has verbal diarrhoea and I'm the one left trying to mop it all up.
For someone like me, whose Heroes-stye superpowers would be "filing" and "dogmatic attention to detail" (remember the pathetic joy I experienced when I managed to mark all my emails as Read?), having an application whose sole purpose in life is to remind me just how behind I am with everything, is my own personal Kryptonite.
Instead of collating all my RSS feeds, Bloglines might as well just open up with a large screen message that reads "you're a big loser who will never be able to keep on top of all this" and it would have much the same effect.
But just when did reading the internet become such a stressful experience? It's when EVERYONE started up their own blog, that's when. And when sites like Shiny Shiny went from doing a handful of posts a day to 20. If I dedicated the rest of my life to them, I could probably just about keep on top of what Engadget and Gizmodo churn out every day, but all meals would have to be taken in situ and I might have to seriously consider installing a commode.
So, I've got a suggestion. Let's all hold hands and make a pact: no more writing on the internet until everyone has caught up. No? OK, well FINE. There's nothing else for it, I'm just going to have to delete everyone and become a web hermit.
Katie Lee is editorial director of Shiny Media, and is no longer participating in the internet.
