Well, C doesn't really have strings, just pointers. Calling them "strings" is just an abstraction for us. They don't even have to be null-terminated (even though by convention they often are)!

And this is precisely what I want, in some cases. I use C when I need a low-level byte wrangling code that tightly interfaces with the operating system, or when I can't afford to allocate memory at will (like all effortless string-handling languages do under the hood), or when I don't want any runtime and need my code to behave like a shellcode, basically, or...

I guess C is still used because people find it useful. No need to be a fan of it.