No one said “fewer” wasn’t also acceptable.
Just popping in to point out that I added the last paragraph to post #40 after Indistinguishable’s post #41.
Huh? Language is a democracy? “Less” plus count noun is a minority form that’s also used in a major ad campaign?
I too think these kinds of debates are kind of pointless too, primarily because I’ve never met a prescriptivist who had the first idea of what languages are, how they work, and how one goes about studying them scientifically.
I’d say that’s more accurate than saying that language is a dictatorship. After all, what a word means depends on what the concensus believes it to mean.
But, this is GQ, and the question has been answered.