Or, what to do when signal becomes noise.

When I first discovered RSS feeds a couple of years ago, my initial reaction was “so?” The technology seemed daunting.

Once I got it, though, I seriously got it, and before long my reader swelled to well over fifty feeds. I was getting constant updates on everything that had ever caught my eye (my criteria for adding feeds was disturbingly low). Inevitably, it reached a point where I couldn’t keep up, and I realized I had no choice but to do some pruning.

My first instinct — what I think is probably the most logical instinct — was to delete all of the marginal feeds and leave only a handful of big sites. Were I to do that, I’d continue to get all of the most “important” information. I’d keep my finger on the pulse.

Instead I decided to go in the opposite direction, deleting a handful of the largest, most frequently updated feeds.

I call them “gatekeeper” sites — those sites that either break or re-post all of the news that makes the internet interesting on a given day. In my case, this meant getting rid of my feeds for Deadspin, Kottke, and Stereogum (to start).

Nothing against these sites, of course. I’ll continue to visit all of them. But now I’m populating my feed reader with quirkier and arguably more interesting sites like the Orange Element blog, the Brains on Fire blog, and Chain Store Age (I have a thing for trade mags). Sites with which I think this one fits quite nicely, if I may be so bold.

I’ll probably still see (mostly) everything that’s on the gatekeeper sites through other means. And when I do visit those sites, it’ll be to see what they had to say about it.

It’s ultimately about recognizing that there’s a tension between three related factors: the availability of information, the extent to which it’s interesting, and the extent to which it’s useful. The first is limitless, so it’s extra important to properly manage the other two.

Truth be told, I’m not that good at it. But I’m getting there.