I love D&D 5e and I can say with confidence that I've never played the game the way it's meant to be played. I recently started DMing out of that frustration.

So, in my session zero i made it a point to establish that players were responsible for learning the rules, that we would stop the game to look up rules as often as necessary. I was convinced that the convenience of having it all in a digital platform would help keep the game running smoothly.

I suspect that the opposite is true.

During character creation players select class and race from a drop-down menu. It shows a brief description but the two or three pages of lore and explanations get skipped.

Exotic options get mixed with classic options without context.

You get a spell's name and description, but you're not shown how spellcasting works.

For gear you get absolutely nothing except range, damage, and some tags.

D5D beyond is what hooked me into 5e. It's a great resource. But it also facilities scanning and cherry-picking. I consider myself tech-savvy and an early adopter, but if I ever run 5e again, it'll be BYOB (bring your own book).

I fell in love with D&D by flipping through a 3.5 core book a coworker left in their desk. I found myself reading the bits of lore and looking at the pictures over and over again. I think that magic is gone.

D&D is far from perfect. I am aware that the text is bloated and complicated. The game sets out to achieve too much. Most people don't have time for that. And brand recognition and peer pressure means people never try simpler games. But if players put in the effort it wouldn't be as bad as many think.

Are you just complaining that the character builder tool is separate from the rule books? Because, yeah, obviously you have to read the books to find the lore and context of a bunch of things. The character sheet is not where lore goes...

I'm sorry that a simple and easy to use character tool devoid of bloat is what caused you to quit DDB (and somehow 5e in its entirety?).

The way I went about it appears opposite to yours. The character creater for me is what happens after I read about the races/classes/backgrounds and build the character outline in my head. Once I know I want an elf wizard sailor, then I go build it. The desciptions in the creator just give reminders for things I've already read. If I can't remember all the details, I can open the links for more or open a tab to the page while I'm building. I can have both open at the same time (multiple monitors help here) and it's a much nicer experience than doing it with a book and paper. Now for some of the exotic options (I'm gussing it's languages or some weapons you're talking about?) getting mixed in, that is a problem, but that's easily navigated with some DM guidence. There could be more description on the gear section of the builder, but with a book, you're still flipping through to reference tables. I have books that I use for in person games. I also use DDB for in person and online. The books are fun, but DDB is so much nicer for almost everything. I can't imagine going back to just books after using it but everyone is different on what they like. 

Unrelated, but I like the way the title of this topic is phrased like a Harry Potter book title.

Go buy the 5e Player's Handbook

All of the basic rules are fully available on D&D Beyond pretty much exactly as you'd get them in the player's handbook (minus the PHB specific content). While yes, the character builder does focus on streamlining the information to the very basics, players are able to view the lore and other details of races, spells etc. if they want to.

The purpose of the character builder is to make it easier to… build a character; everything else is optional and up to the DM and players to decide; if you want them to read the rules, ask them to do so, if you want them to read up on the lore of races when building their characters then ask them to do that, or have a discussion during session zero to help them flesh out characters or reconsider their options.

I do kind of agree that players who approach character building as "open builder, choose options, done" may get into an overly mechanical mindset, but I'm not sure what to do about that as players with books can do the same thing if they skip over the lore and go straight to the rules.

A "flavour oriented" character building option (alongside quick start etc.) might be a cool idea for a feature; i.e- presenting races with images and lore, or maybe a questionaire designed to pick race/class/background for you based on your answers to some questions about who you want your character to be? You'd get full access to the builder later to change things, but it could help some people who want to be more character than mechanics focused.

I can understand the frustration. I have a lot of players come through my games that care little about the world and are mainly concerned about how each ability, or item affects their stats. I think this has far less to do with how DnD is presented and built and far more to do with a specific type of person and what they are looking to get out of the game, which isnt bad either. Many people love dnd as a simulation, others are here for the story and the world-building. It think its good as a DM to challenge your players to make characters and stories that are real and based in the reality of the world, but at the end of the day you may just be playing with people who want something different out of the game than you. There are plenty of people playing dnd for the story more than the rules as well, and I don't think 5e or DnD beyond has done anything to hurt that.