This is an interesting topic worth discussing. Thanks for bringing it up. I think that people who utilize RSS go through these stages:

1. Wow, this is awesome. I’m going to subscribe to every page with an RSS icon, starting with the shovel blogs and major news sites.

2. Okay, I need to get this under control. I need a sophisticated tagging taxonomy so that I can see my new content by category.

3. I’m spending way too much time on this. I’m reading RSS all day. Even if I miss a few days, my RSS reader explodes and i have to blow off my social life to catch up.

4. I need to start unsubscribing. I’m seeing a lot of the same stuff over and over. I just saw that Apple surpassed Microsoft in market share 10 times in 8 different feeds.

5. Ok, this is under control. It’s not everything. It’s just another thing, another tool in my belt for staying informed. And if I miss things, life goes on.

As for unsubscribing from blogs that aren’t updated regularly, that in itself isn’t a reason to unsubscribe. In fact, the beauty of RSS is that it makes update frequency less relevant. I think of it as Tivo for the blogosphere. It’s also Iike one-way email. It comes to me when its ready so I don’t have to constantly go to it.

The key is finding a tool that makes services like Google Reader better. My favorite is Reeder for the iPad. I never see feeds unless they have new content. So dormant feeds don’t form clutter like they do in the Google Reader web interface.