more helping

"it's actually worse than silently stopping to use the software."

This is true if, but only if, you where *already* aware of precisely which changes annoy users the most - and have *already* decided that you're not going to do anything to rectify the problems those users experience.

In that case, hearing about the problems is just noise. You seem to hint at that with "Well, it's hardly likely to appeal to everyone, and I made it like this for a reason."

If that's the response to any and all feedback, i.e. "the user is always wrong", then obviously hearing from users is unwanted and pointless. You know best anyway - "I made it like this for a reason" (and implied: "my reason is better/more-important than the reasons people dislike it)

Sometimes this attitude is legitimate. If I don't care about users, for example. (if I write a program to solve a problem for ME, I don't nessecarily care at all if I'm the only user, or if there's many)