You could look at the current results and say, it doesn't really matter, only about half of the readers care. On the other hand, you're actively handicapping your reader base by 50% for not keeping a schedule.
I've done a short writeup on why it matters, but diving into the minutia of reaching success might be worth making a thread.
Long story short, you should make every possible effort to gain new readers. You're competing with hundreds of authors for limited reader attention. In short, while you can find singular counter-examples for all sorts of "advised rules", generally, anything that kicks the trend in one rule generally obeys nearly all the others.
If you voluntarily skip over one potential benefit, you're actively handicapping your success chances. That's fine, and it depends on what your goals are as an author. However, 99% of complaints I see as an author are "How do I get more readers" or "How do I get people to comment" or "Please review my story to tell me why I'm not getting readers". Usually, they're ignoring 5 or 6 advised practices, in addition to other problems.
