" care about a few extra 100s of ms of latency?"
Well, as someone who grew up in the modem era(90's) and was trying to play online fps games. I cared quite a bit about latency.
Normal people also like things to be quick you know :)
Based on that experience in the 90s to this day i want my internet connectivity to be as fast as possible and i'm willing to pay.
Low latency enables video/audio chat amongst other things and just a better experience.
A quick google search gives 600 ms latency for satellites(not Starlink) thats quite a alot. Also bandwidth is a issue with existing providers i think.