You're surprised because apparently you don't understand what it means - not your fault, because apparently it's not being properly explained to y'all newer fandom entrants, and I can understand how in a world with clearer indicators of content via AO3 tags, and the wider tagging/warning conventions that come with them, it doesn't immediately click what it's supposed to mean.
"Don't Like Don't Read" doesn't mean "don't start reading the thing if you don't like what it's about", because when DLDR started being a fandom aphorism, you'd never be sure. What it meant then and still means today is "if you start reading a fic and you find out you don't like it, don't keep reading it."
It wasn't a preventative to reading things you didn't like, and it wasn't a "protection for fragile egos of immature writers", it was a directive for when you the reader inevitably did read something you didn't like. It was a reminder that if you don't like a fic anymore, STOP READING IT. Don't keep reading to complain, don't leave a hate comment, don't leave unsolicited "crit" comments, just use the back button and find something else to read. It was specifically meant to remind people that if they didn't like something they ran into in a fic, they didn't have to be a dick to the author, they could literally just stop reading.
(EDIT: @aimofdestiny also pointed out something good in tags reblogging this and I wanted to add it here for posterity bc it's also important to the OG context and slipped my mind:
#minor point though. ime DLDR was also for pairings. hate-reading and then flaming the rival ship was common)
And that holds true today because even with all the tags in the world, you still might come across a fic that you end up not liking for one reason or another, whether it's a trope you didn't realize would be in the fic that you hate or bad formatting or whatever. Yes, you can avoid a lot of things you won't like in a way you couldn't before, but you're still gonna find fics that you don't like that you can't tell you won't like just from the tags. And in all cases, the same rule applies:
If you don't like what you're reading (whether it's the tags, the summary, or the fic itself), don't keep reading it, and don't bitch about it to the author.
(also honestly in the 25 years I've been in fandom, it's never been cool to give unsolicited crit, but writers used to get it - usually not even concrit, just plain crit - a lot more often, especially if you didn't explicitly say you weren't looking for any crit. DLDR was one of the ways we doubled down on "no really, I don't want crit, if you want to complain, here's the door.")
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