nothing more annoying than a prescriptivist, cause they entirely miss the point of what language is

I think there are two different sorts of “prescriptivism” that need to be distinguished.

One is based on the idea that every language has one ideal form that must be elucidated by experts and enforced across the rest of the language community. This was never a real part of linguistics—it’s a popular misconception from people imagining that linguistics is an extrapolation of grade-school grammar.

But the other form of “prescriptivism” is just fluent speakers correcting people acquiring the language when they perceive a mistake—this is a natural function that occurs in all language communities, starting with parents teaching their children. And it’s a necessary function: learning is orders of magnitude more efficient when the learner has both positive and negative examples.

The problem comes when speakers miscategorize speech in other dialects as incorrect examples of their own dialect, and attempt to correct them accordingly.

* "There is ..."

J/k ;-)

‘But “glory” doesn’t mean “a nice knock-down argument,”’ Alice objected.

‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.’

The argument i see against anti-prescriptivism is that words are at their most useful when they mean something and everyone can pretty much agree on what that something is. Yes, it is annoying and pedantic and more or less pointless when someone insists that you one must say "whom" and not "who", or makes a big fuss over a verb phrases that happens to put a preposition at the end of its clause. But i think that's different from a native speaker correcting someone who's just learning a language (as a second language or a child learning their first) and has said something in a way that's nonstandard and confusing.

On that note, i do wonder how a language would evolve with no prescriptivism at all. A carefully controlled environment where nobody is allowed to tell anyone how to talk, offer suggestions, or even answer questions about the language or a statement's meaning.

I think you'll find that outside of grade school English (as a first language) classrooms people are more likely to be against prescriptivism than for it. At least, that's what i've found, but i'm more immersed in the linguistics parts of the Web than the picking-fights-for-no-reason parts.

And maybe i'm wrong about my opinion there, and i'm just being hypocritical and thinking that my level of linguistic prescriptivism is the correct one. I don't know, i'm no expert.

ah, a sibling.
welcome to xenoglossphobic threadiverse.
I’ve enjoyed the bumpy ride.

To add more nuance to this intentionally no-nuance take, I think what matters far far far far more than correctness is CONTEXT

You should use different linguistic context when talking to your boss than you do when talking to your mum, than you do when talking to a friend, than you do when talking to a stranger, than you do when writing a format piece of writing, etc etc etc