@acarson The problem is many sites lack RSS support these days — or hide it well. Even those that have it often only syndicate the first few lines of a post.
If I want to read the site in RSS chances are I have to bang out a Perl or Python script to parse the whole post and send that to the reader instead. It’s a PITA.
Also Reddit is basically centralized Usenet. True, Usenet isn’t dead, but good luck finding a quality mobile client.