Agree. I think this is why I abandoned the Google Reader. First, I started culling all the frequently updated, seldom read feeds because they were inflating my unread count, then I stopped checking in. I went back to visiting the sites to see if anything new showed up.
Not sure how they would solve this, but I think you may be on to something. Emails are a burden. If you want to sell me something recreational, it can't trigger such an association.
You can turn off unread counts, which helps a fair bit. You'll know there's something unread, but there's less anxiety about the volume of things that are unread. Combined with a willingness to use Mark All Read without having looked at everything in a feed has made it pretty usable for me.
I've never really thought about it much. I'm just looking back and noticing that once I hadn't checked in for a week, I didn't want to check in. I was procrastinating about checking my feed reader instead of procrastinating by checking my feed reader.
Not sure how they would solve this, but I think you may be on to something. Emails are a burden. If you want to sell me something recreational, it can't trigger such an association.