A Shoutout To the RSS Rebels — Thanks For Reading
Written by The American Gadfly Mike Portney
Broadcast live from a fallout shelter in an undisclosed Portland, OR neighborhood
I. The Quiet Ones Who Actually Read
Let’s start with a confession: I write a lot of crazy shit. Gonzo elegies to dying democracies. Satirical rants wrapped in cigarette ash and expletives. Grief-stricken rebukes of neoliberalism. And you—yes, you—actually read it.
You're not doomscrolling TikTok until your thumb seizes up. You're not passively absorbing whatever Facebook’s dementia algorithm slings next. You, dear reader, are different. You found the RSS feed.
You said:
"I don't want a curated algorithm. I want a pipeline straight to the uncut lunacy."
That’s not just preference. That’s rebellion.
So this post is for you. All 2,900 words of it. A salute. A kiss on the lips. A raised glass. A middle finger to the norm, wrapped in a thank-you card.
II. RSS IS PUNK ROCK: A Manifesto
Here’s the thing nobody says out loud anymore: RSS is fucking punk rock.
RSS doesn’t ask for your email. It doesn’t throttle content unless you pay a billionaire. It doesn’t come with tracking pixels, pop-ups, or retargeting spyware. It’s raw, uncut, decentralized, anarchist-grade distribution.
Using RSS in 2025 is like showing up to a corporate board meeting in a leather jacket with “READING IS SEXY” spray-painted on the back.
It says:
“I’ll read what I want, when I want.”
“I don’t need your push notifications.”
“I don’t trust anyone with a logo.”
It’s the last real radio. The shortwave for the new underground. And if you found my RSS feed? That means you’ve tuned in.
III. WHERE TO FIND THE FEED (AND WHY YOU SHOULD SHARE IT)
For those of you reading this some other way—perhaps by divine accident, or maybe you clicked a rogue link on Twitter before Elon nuked it—here’s how to join the secret society:
🛰️ The Feed: https://www.misinformationsucks.com/blog?format=rss
Just plug that bad boy into your favorite RSS reader. Feedly, NetNewsWire, Reeder, Inoreader. Or go extra punk and use a CLI reader like Newsboat and start pulling Gadfly dispatches into your terminal like it’s the Matrix.
The mainstream platforms would rather you not know this exists. RSS is unmonetizable, untargetable, and ungovernable. That's why it’s yours. That’s why it’s ours.
IV. WHO YOU ARE (AND WHY I OWE YOU EVERYTHING)
I have to make a few assumptions. Because you didn’t just happen upon this by accident. You took deliberate, quiet action. And that says something.
Maybe you’re a media dropout.
Sick of the Atlantic's moral constipation, the New York Times' Ivy League bipolar disorder, or Substack’s race to the bottom of the pseudointellectual barrel.
You came here because I say the things they’re too afraid to say out loud.
Maybe you're a burner.
Not the kind who DJs tech house while microdosing on a bicycle. No, the kind who’s burned bridges, burned beliefs, burned old versions of yourself because you wanted truth—not comfort. You’re not afraid of heat.
Maybe you’re a watcher of the watchers.
You sniff out power like a bloodhound in heat. You want to know who’s pulling the strings, who’s rigging the game, and who’s smiling while they do it.
You came here to hear someone scream what you’ve been whispering for years.
Or maybe...
You're just lonely. And weird. And smart.
And so am I.
And now we’ve found each other.
And that’s something.
V. WHAT YOU’VE ENABLED
You reading this? It matters. You clicking “subscribe” on an RSS feed that I buried like a secret treasure? That means more than any 10,000 fake followers ever could.
Because you’ve allowed me to:
Write what I want, when I want, without a leash.
Build a body of work that can’t be shadowbanned, throttled, or demonetized.
Create an archive—a true one—of the ideas we’re not supposed to say out loud.
Craft characters like The American Gadfly, Reuben Goldsplatt, and Sable Rook—each one an avatar for part of your brain you’ve been told to hide.
You're not just a reader. You're a co-conspirator. A sleeper agent. A node in the network of dissent.
VI. WHAT’S COMING NEXT
Consider this your insider brief.
You're going to see a lot more heat coming out of MisinformationSucks.com this summer. Why? Because we’re scaling. Strategizing. Plotting. Punching up. Punching sideways. Occasionally punching ourselves in the face to stay sharp.
Upcoming Drops:
🧠 Wrestling With a Message: The online course companion to the book—launching for subscribers first.
🕵️ LLM Ethics Arena: A new “Trojan Horse” ethics experiment that uses AI models to expose themselves on tape like pervy philosophy professors.
📰 Portland Stripper News: Gonzo news from the only people in Portland still telling the truth—strippers.
📊 The American Gadfly's Summer Investment Guide: Spoiler alert: short the empire, long the weird.
And that’s just what I can tell you. Some of what’s coming is encrypted, layered, memetic, and more contagious than COVID at a crypto rave.
VII. WHY I KISS YOUR ASS (BUT ONLY A LITTLE)
Look, I don’t do this often. Praise makes me itchy. Compliments remind me of my mother. But you’re not just a reader. You’re the audience. Capital A.
You're the reason I’m still typing instead of shrieking into the void.
You're the kind of person I write for:
The woman screaming at a town hall because her water smells like sulfur and secrets.
The gay anarchist who listens to Chopin on vinyl while reading CIA files.
The ex-evangelical deconstructing their trauma one blog post at a time.
The fatherless autodidact building a second brain with duct tape and ketamine.
You get it. You get that the world is insane, and the only sane response is to go even crazier—but on purpose. Creatively. Loudly. Logically. With flair.
So yeah, I’m kissing your ass. But I’m doing it because I like the view.
VIII. SIGNAL BOOST THIS SHIT (IF YOU DARE)
I won’t beg. But I will ask. Because RSS doesn’t play nice with virality.
If this feed means something to you—if these words keep you company, keep you laughing, keep you sharp—then send it to someone else who needs it.
Send it to:
The smart friend who’s disillusioned with politics.
The weirdo cousin who got kicked off Instagram for telling the truth.
The journalist who can’t print what they’re really thinking.
Just give them this:
👉 https://www.misinformationsucks.com/blog?format=rss 👈
And tell them:
“This is the last honest feed on the Internet. Subscribe before it’s banned, burned, or bought.”
IX. A FEW MORE THANK YOUS (SPECIFICALLY FOR YOU)
If you’ve stuck with me this far—and I know you have, RSS readers don’t bounce like social media sheep—here are a few closing blessings, carved in bold.
May your feeds stay clean.
May your minds stay dirty.
May you never confuse sanity with obedience.
May your bullshit detector remain set to “Gonzo.”
And may you always find joy in the dissent, even when it hurts.
You keep reading. I’ll keep writing.
Together, we’ll keep whispering one beautiful, dangerous, necessary truth:
Misinformation sucks. But you? You do not.
X. Epilogue: The Real Ones Always Find Each Other
In a digital world obsessed with reach and scale, you chose intimacy. Truth. Unfiltered signal. You chose this.
That means something.
You’re not the audience I expected when I started this.
You’re the audience I wanted.
So thank you.
From the deepest depths of the disinformation sewer I scream from daily:
Thank you.
Thank you for being real.
Now go share the feed with someone as bold, weird, and pissed-off as you are.
Until next time,
—The American Gadfly .
