I agree that RSS is a poor way to consume to consume social news sites like Hacker News. It's a fantastic way to consume blogs, especially infrequently-updated ones. Why would I flip though 100 tabs in my browser every day to see which ten blogs have new posts when I can open my RSS reader instead and see all the new content at once?

Exactly, that's the time consuming part. Not a lot of people are following a 100 blog, I was. I remember checking my rss reader every 2 minutes to check a new article.

The only solution I found to get back to normal life was ditching my rss reader. Now I just the read 3-4 blogs frequently and check the others from time to time. I enjoy the design of each blogs. It's part of the atmosphere and of the read.

RSS has been my preferred interface to HN, news sites, and blogs for years.

Having to go to websites to get the same information is so cumbersome, primitive, and time consuming in comparison.

I don't really care about the "charisma" of websites. I'm much more interested in just getting the information they have to offer in the most efficient way possible. I couldn't consume nearly as much information efficiently without something like RSS.

Really depends on how you feed on information. Like I said in another response I was an avid user of Google Reader and netnewswire. I was checking it every 2minutes to read a new article, I had basically no life beside my rss reader (and before that I had no life because of IRC, another story).

The only way to go back to my normal life was to ditch my RSS readers. Now I'm enjoying a few websites and I realize I really don't need all those informations. Some websites I don't even need to check their new articles "in time".

And I found out I did care about the "charisma" of websites. It was like reading a different news paper, different texture, different layout, different feeling.

I understand both part, but I think very few people need a RSS reader (do we all read 100+ websites everyday? I was and I don't anymore). And I think a lot of RSS reader users would actually enjoy going back to the tranquility of reading directly through a blog's interface. I know it's less practical, you change the UI everytime and if you read a lot you only need the information. But juste give it a try, don't use your RSS reader for like a week, or at least a few days if you really need it. You'll see a difference :)

TL;DR:Internet doesn't have to be all about information.