Why the internet doesn't love me back?

I love the internet, in part because I've known it since the days you had to take a day off work to download a single photo. But I have the distinct feeling my love isn't reciprocated.

In the end, what I actually want to do online is consume interesting content. Mostly read, occasionally watch or listen to something, but since the internet is full of people far smarter than me, what I really want is to hear what they have to say. To absorb ideas, concepts, facts, information. In short, I enter the internet hoping to log off more informed, more cultured, or more prepared than before. I won't go as far as saying a better person, but when I go offline I want to think of myself as a slightly more "intelligent" person than when I entered.

I want to have more ideas, and I want those ideas to be tightly connected to each other. To get there, I need to manage the content I consume online, and the tools I use to consume it, in a way that's simple, intuitive, and above all free. In my view, that takes two things: a content aggregator and a bookmark manager.

My favorite digital products, in fact, were Google Reader and Pocket. They were perfect. With those two tools in hand, I felt like I could lift the world, or at least make my way through the internet in a healthy, worthwhile way. Both got shut down on me: Google Reader in 2013, Pocket last year. And I ask myself: why? What am I doing wrong? Is this need really just mine? Why does the internet, this wonderful, superintelligent entity, insist on forcing me to scroll endlessly through content picked by someone else, hiding the material I actually care about behind a wall of noise, ads, and interference? Why should I be "influenced" in choosing what to read, instead of getting to choose it myself, the way people did in the 20th century, when you'd walk into a newsstand, scan the rack of magazines, pick one (in my case, maybe three or four), take it home, and read a string of articles start to finish.

Too nostalgic? Is it wrong to treat the internet like the biggest newsstand in the world?

Maybe. But you know what? I don't care.

I don't care so much that the rest of the world can go wherever it wants and keep feeding a horrible internet. I built Multivrss to serve a need that's probably mine alone, and that's fine. My will, and mine alone, will guide what Multivrss becomes.

In here, you'll get to interact with the internet the way I believe is right. The way the internet expresses itself best, the way it shows its original nature. I know that sounds arrogant and pretentious, but arrogance and pretentiousness, or being "opinionated," as people like to say now, are part of the product. Multivrss exists to state an opinion about what the internet is and what I think it should be. That's it.

And if you'd rather burn through your attention span and the integrity of your mind scrolling endless short-form clips picked out by an algorithm, I promise not to judge you. Or maybe I'm already judging you, and you just haven't noticed, because you lost your concentration several lines ago.