You're implying that traditional, complex, and arbitrary pronounciations should be considered "smarter" than logical, simpler, and hence modern ones because...?

Pronounciation is a inherently classist concept; the harder you make it, the more you entrench classism and intolerance into society. Regardless of the motivation for such correspondents to use a modern form, I personally would applaud it as progress, rather than sneering at it.

"I personally would applaud it as progress"

One man's progress is another man's regress. Maybe it's the result of the "Hooked on Phonics" generation having grown up.

Yes, but I'm not a native speaker, so I have the privilege of seeing the matter from a more neutral perspective. And what I see, when it comes to pronounciations, is that traditionalism is largely illogical, and maintained simply as a way to signal exclusion. It looks harmless on some levels (i.e. figuring out whether somebody is "local" by the way they pronounce certain topological names), but more often than not it's just used to discriminate between education-rich and education-poor, which then translates into straightforward classism where educational systems are deeply and fundamentally classist (like in England or the US).

> Those would be more inclusive and modern pronunciations?

Yes.

> One man's progress is another man's regress.

For sure. After all, a few Catholics were ecstatic when pope Benedict XVI reinstated and promoted saying mass in Latin, effectively trying to revert a century of progress. But fighting actual and logical progress tends to be a losing proposition in the long run, and that particular movement kinda died off quickly.