Richard Golian

1995-born. Charles University alum. Head of Performance at Mixit. 10+ years in marketing and data.

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How to Find Blogs by Real People

A practical guide in the age of AI and the dead internet: RSS, a reader, OPML and the cozy web
Richard Golian
Richard Golian · 130 reads
Hi, I am Richard. On this blog, I share thoughts, personal stories, findings and what I am working on. I hope this article brings you some value.

For years I mostly read books. I found blogs and single articles by chance: I either came across something on social media, or I went looking for something on Google. Lately that has stopped working. A large share of the text that reaches me now was written by a machine. Good writing by real people is getting harder to find.

The first thing to understand is that the internet is not one place. It has layers. And a part of the population has moved to a different layer than the one where most of us look.

The first layer: the open web

The open web is what most people think of as the whole internet. Google, public pages, the feed on social media. Everything that can be searched and is open to anyone.

This layer has changed. It is flooded with content written by a machine. People call it the dead internet: a place where much of the text, the images and the answers are no longer made by people. I have written about this before.

It is also called the dark forest. That metaphor comes from the science fiction writer Liu Cixin; Yancey Strickler applied it to the internet in 2019: public spaces going quiet as people retreat into private channels. The writer Maggie Appleton later applied it to the age of artificial intelligence: an open web so flooded with generated content that real people are leaving it.

The second layer: the cozy web

Where did they go? To a layer called the cozy web. These are smaller, trusted spaces: newsletters, small personal blogs, private chats, closed communities. The term comes from Venkatesh Rao.

In this layer people still write for people. The problem is that you very rarely reach it through Google or any other algorithm. You have to get there another way. One way is a list kept by a person, not an algorithm. That is why I made the Human filter.

On some sites the layers can also be felt visually, in how a site looks and behaves. I show what this looks like on my own blog on a separate page, cozy web. Although, knowing what the people who own the algorithms and apply AI are capable of, I would not be surprised if even the specific style of community sites and personal blogs starts being imitated.

How to reach that layer

The tools that make it possible have existed for years. They are old and simple. For a long time they meant nothing to me either, until I needed them. I started paying attention to them about a year ago, when I decided to develop my blog further in terms of its features. That is how I came to RSS. What is it?

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Sources

Yancey Strickler: The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet (2019), which applied the dark forest metaphor from Liu Cixin and his The Three-Body Problem trilogy to the internet.
Venkatesh Rao: The Extended Internet Universe (2019), the essay that introduced the cozy web.
Maggie Appleton: The Dark Forest and the Cozy Web, who popularised both terms with a well-known illustration.

Summary

The internet is not one place, it has layers. The open web is now flooded with content from machines, the so-called dead internet and dark forest, and real people have moved to smaller trusted spaces, the cozy web. What those layers are and how to reach them through an RSS feed, a reader and one OPML file, shown on my own page, the Human filter, where I share the authors I read and consider good.

Common questions on this article's topic

What is RSS?
RSS is a second address that a blog has besides its normal page, holding the same content, in full or as a summary, in a form made for reader applications. It lets a computer or mobile app show you new text only from the authors you want to read, with no algorithm deciding for you.
What is an RSS feed?
An RSS feed is that machine readable address of a blog, listing its latest articles. You add it to an RSS reader, which then brings you new posts from that blog automatically.
What is an RSS reader?
An RSS reader is an application into which you put the feed addresses of blogs. It goes through those blogs itself and brings you their new articles in one place. It works like an inbox, but for blogs.
What is an OPML file?
OPML is a single file that holds a list of feed addresses. You import it into an RSS reader once and start following every blog it contains at the same time, instead of adding addresses one by one.
What is the cozy web?
The cozy web is the layer of smaller, trusted spaces where people retreat from the open web: newsletters, small personal blogs, private chats and closed communities. The term comes from Venkatesh Rao, and Maggie Appleton popularised it with a well-known illustration of the web's layers.
How can I find blogs written by real people?
One way is hand made curated lists and blogrolls. On my Human filter page I share authors, blogs and articles that I have read and consider good, and the page comes with an OPML file that lets you follow every recommended author in one step.
What is the dark forest of the internet?
The dark forest is a metaphor for a web that people leave for private spaces, the way animals fall silent at night when predators come out. The image comes from the science fiction writer Liu Cixin and his Three-Body trilogy; Yancey Strickler applied it to the internet in 2019 in the essay The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet. Maggie Appleton later connected it to the age of artificial intelligence.
Richard Golian

If you have any thoughts, questions, or feedback, feel free to drop me a message at mail@richardgolian.com.

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