Why bother releasing OSS at all then? What do developers who don't want to listen to their users honestly gain from this? Padding on their résumé?

If you just wish to solve your own problems, build things for yourself and keep it private. If, on the other hand, you want to help others and make your software public, then do right by the people who decided to try your software and listen to what they have to say.

How anyone can defend the attitude of the VLC developer in the thread linked above is beyond me.

Imagine finding a piece of art you like, but finding a minor anatomy flaw. When you point it out, the artist says they aren't going to fix it, because the piece is finished, and it would be impossible for them to do it, you point out that other artists have touched up their finished pieces, and they tell you to do it yourself, then.

Why is the artist obligated to do the work you think they should do? Why, if they don't do this work, should they be obligated to not release their work publicly?

FOSS is not an obligation to do everything that every user wants you to do. It's not an obligation to even communicate with those users. In fact, it comes explicitly with no warranty, even for fitness for any purpose.

The developer is a poor communicator, but how anybody can be defending those annoying, entitled, lazy users is beyond me.

You release it to the public so other developers can stand on the shoulders of giants when it's time to scratch their itch, instead of wasting time re-implementing the basics. Why did this need explained?