Why am I subscribed to telegram channels that I don’t read?
Start…
When four friends gathered in the kitchen one Friday night to smoke hookah, drink beer and discuss “how is it all?”, Hunger and dissatisfaction soared in the air. Dissatisfaction from a bunch of small (and not so) problems and hunger for ways to solve them. Everything that helps to kindle it properly is thrown into the fire of friendly conversation on such evenings: work, personal life, sports, politics.
That evening, in addition to the most relevant topic (guess which one), we also discussed a fresh change in the status of Instagram * in the Russian Federation. Discussed that VPN would be our new subscription in bank card spending; discussed how it would be freezing for many to turn it on and off all the time; discussed absurd stories of friends with QRs of their telegram channels, because everyone has a second phone to scan them, right?
It was obvious to us, as well as to everyone: no matter what happens, people will not give up social networks and spend a lot of time on them.
What’s bad about it? We declare: nothing! Social networks, as one of the most accessible benefits of civilization, brought to the masses on the wings of the Internet, have given us a number of wonderful opportunities. They make more accessible our basic but most important need for progress: getting information. However, they also brought with them a number of new problems, including a red badge with frightening numbers: unread messages.
Why am I subscribed to so many channels if I don’t read them?
Times are changing, and today more and more of our friends and favorite bloggers are switching to the Telegram platform. Before, when we followed their life on Instagram*, we didn’t even think about how interesting this content is to us and why we view it. Simply because Instagram* is designed in such a way that it does not give us time for such reflections: we either scroll down the feed or quickly click on the right side of the screen to a new story, passing information past our consciousness, and if something is of interest, we slow down the pace and hold your attention for a while. What’s going on in Telegram?
REASON NUMBER ONE
In Telegram, we now have a huge list of chats, and we have a choice of who to start with and which channels to watch. We open one of the channels, and Telegram shows us the first unread message, which can often be written several days ago. And we begin to scroll through the content, absorbing information. When we scroll to the end, we have two options: either we continue to scroll and Telegram jumps us to the next channel in the list, to the first unread message, or we go back to the list of all chats. And again, we have a choice of what content to view next, and everything starts all over again … I think you have already noticed how much effort is required on your part. Is not it?
When so many actions are required of us, we become less likely to consume content. As a result, unread messages accumulate, winding up the same red counter.
REASON NUMBER TWO
The psychological phenomenon “Fear of Missing Out” (FOMO), as well as “doomscrolling”, entered our lives with irresistible force; we felt it well on ourselves at the beginning of 2022. This is the state when we experience the fear of missing out on something important that is happening around us. As a result, we have witnessed a dramatic increase in the number of Telegram channels in our chat list. No wonder so many of us don’t have time to read the content or take advantage of the “useful” information offered by these channels.
However, information overload and a continuous stream of messages can cause even more anxiety and anxiety, causing us to come into a kind of stupor and taking more time for us to assimilate the messages, which, in turn, only accumulate.
In such conditions, it is extremely important to learn how to find a balance between our thirst for information and psychological stability in order to avoid both constant anxiety and information overload.
REASON NUMBER THREE
The need to create a so-called “collection of channels”, which may be useful in the future, is common. Often there are situations when we notice an interesting channel from a friend and ask him to share. At such a moment, we usually subscribe to this channel. We cannot be sure that we will need this channel right here and now, but the easiest way is to take it and subscribe to it than either forget about it or write it down somewhere in order to remember and subscribe in the future. And what happens in the end? That’s right, we are again facing an increase in the number of unread messages.
The good old question: “What if?”
After such reasoning, one of us came up with an amazing idea: “it would be great to make a single feed in tg so that people just scroll through the publications of different channels.” It was followed by an old question that often leads to new, revolutionary ideas: “What if?”.
The question was: “What if we make a bot that could solve all these problems?”. This is how we came up with the Chronicle, the hope to put things in order in our Telegram.
What if a single tape?
We all kill tons of time on TikTok, Instagram stories* and YouTube shorts. We scroll through them ad nauseam until we see everything there is to see. In the meantime, it is already morning outside the window, although we picked up the phone at about midnight. Time for “but”; but in Telegram, we ignore a bunch of channels and their publications, and they gather dust there while we scroll through the next tik-toks.
Why is that? Do we have some kind of general resentment against Durov’s product because he took away the wall? Or did we all get a bowl of rice and a cat-wife from comrade Xi so that we can sit on TikTok? Well, the versions are good. However, it seems to me that there is a more significant factor: in Telegram, you simply cannot scroll.
Agree, it would be great to just scroll through a single feed from all the publications of different channels, and not cycle through just 2-3 of them.
Yes, that’s how the Chronicle works. After activating the bot, the user provides him with a list of desired channels that he wants to read. After that, the bot starts forwarding messages from these channels in chronological order. Thus, the user gets the “tape” familiar to all of us, in which you can conveniently view content from multiple channels, simply by swiping your finger across the screen. If the content is not interesting, you can scroll further, and if something attracts attention, just stop scrolling with your finger and keep your eyes on the post of interest. How familiar, isn’t it?
What if Separation of feeds by topics?
We are well aware that it does not make sense to mix all the different types of content that we read on a daily basis into one general feed. After all, we have various channels for receiving news, professional information and even memes. That’s why we can use the bot to create our own feeds based on the channel sets we see fit.
For this purpose, it is enough to simply create a group chat in Telegram and add a bot to it. In this chat, we have the opportunity to set any set of channels on a specific topic that we want to read. We can choose a convenient name for this chat so that it will be easy to find it in the future.
Moreover, we can invite friends and discuss posts together, as well as manage the channel list in the Timeline.
To illustrate, consider my own use-case: I use the chat with the bot itself as my main feed for the news feeds I read throughout the day. For professional news, I created separate group chats dedicated to investments, sports and travel. Now I get information grouped by thematic feeds.
What if I want a break?
The solution to the problem associated with the collection of potentially interesting channels may lie here. The user can collect channel sets in the bot, and the Chronicle will store this information. However, it is important to note that if the user realizes that this collection of channels is not of interest at the moment, he can simply pause the bot.
When the bot is paused, it continues to save the list of channels, but refrains from forwarding messages from them until the user decides to resume receiving posts. Thus, this approach allows you to protect the user from an excessive flow of unnecessary information at the present time, as well as not to worry that some interesting channel will disappear.
What if Detoxing your Telegram?
The truth is that I have indeed unsubscribed from all channels and now fulfill my information need through the bot. Right now I don’t have a single subscription, but nevertheless I continue to receive content that is provided to me in 2-3 carefully organized feeds. This allows me to evenly get information from interesting sources, instead of trying to find the important among +100500 unread.
Total
The result is a story about how we, drawing inspiration from simple kitchen conversations and simple observations, were able to turn them into a full-fledged product that requires significant effort and experience to implement. In the process of analyzing the problems, we gave ourselves space for creativity and the search for solutions.
Initially, our goal was to create this tool exclusively for our own needs. However, we decided to share it with friends, who, in turn, shared with their friends, and so on. Gradually, the Chronicle began to gain momentum and find its place in our rapidly changing world.
Perhaps you should consider turning the Chronicle into your new tool as well? Who knows…
*Instagram, a product of Meta, which is recognized as an extremist organization in Russia
