Or just have the default to be some level of acceptable compression turned on and then an advanced mode to turn it off (or tune it)

You are very off here. People have been playing music in their cars and in clubs for decades, and a lot of them play tracks that predate the loudness wars. If anything, people are more isolated than ever and have much better headphones and speakers than even 10 years ago.

You're conflating regular compression with the insanely over the top mastering people started doing. This goes way beyond keeping people off the volume knob. You do not need that much compression to keep your volume in a listenable range, and you certainly don't have to slam the entire master bus through a limiter. The loudness wars really was just about having a louder track than everyone else. So much so that the whole process of mastering became how to make it sound as loud as possible without sounding compressed. If it were just about keeping volume consistent, they would not do it through the master bus. There are so many interviews with mastering engineers who are frustrated with the pointless chase for volume.

Arguably, listeners have heard it so long that they've gotten used to the exaggerated compression, and they just like it now stylistically. Some of my favorite records are very loud.

All of them, compared to over ear monitors. You can't out engineer physics advantages of a larger speaker. Airpods fall short of other in ear monitors too fwiw, so they are a poor choice in class.

AirPods Pro sound good but most regular people use shitty wired headphones.

Those things you can tear open and re wire yourself if you really needed. Ship of Theseus mdr7506 is possible. Meanwhile how long do those airpod batteries last before you need to pay apples pizzo for replacement you can't do yourself? Some people say only like what 2 years or so. Rich coming from the company that no longer ships chargers due to ewaste concerns.

Excuse my ignorance on the subject but… what? why would people buy vinyl records if not to listen to them?

> I've always been curious - but presumably that’s true even after volume matching?

Yes. Many musicians want their stuff to sound like the music of their heroes they grew up with, and that music is often compressed to a block as well. So compression isn't just about making things sound louder, it also has its own aesthetical value. Whether that is good or bad aesthetics can be argued about, but some people also like to distort their instruments which was also a thing people frowned upon in the past.

> I’ve heard this is also why film and video game soundtracks are often very compressed, even when orchestral, because they have to fit in the background with dialog/sfx

The official themes often are quite compact, but there is often also highly dynamic orchestral work used that is way less recognizable and used with more dynamics (think about te soon creating orchestral atmospheres). Cinema mixes are a thing btw. where many consumers complain about too high dynamic ranges. They complain that the dialog is low and the explosion loud. Cinemas being among the few spaces we mixing engineers have where we have a bit more control over the presumed levels, especially if we are talking about Dolby certified venues.