Ultimately, yeah, you can't reach a consensus about the game, because every group plays it the same way. I believe this has always been the case, in every edition (and perhaps every game, look how many people follow the official rules for Monopoly or Uno, for example!). Unfortunately, discussions about the game tend to break down when D&D is apples for you, and oranges for me.
3e and 4e discussions revolved around what was actually written in the rulebooks as the only real way to discuss the game, since everything else is "in my personal house rules".
5e's...interesting take, that we should just acknowledge that there is no RAW, it's all how you play the game, has it's merits and flaws. Some don't exist, like the idea that 5e somehow "empowers DM's" (I'm sorry, I've played ttrpg's for decades. The DM never needed empowerment, he/she/fnord was going to do what they were going to do regardless of what the books say, it just comes down to what the players will put up with).
But people feel like they do, and like a magic feather, it lets them fly.
However, when it comes to talking about the game, it's a big flaw to me, since anything I say runs into the "but that's not how we play" argument.
If I say "in the games I have played, X" then I get told "you weren't playing right".
If I say, "in the game that follows all the non-optional guidelines, Y", then I get told "you should be using suboption B found on page 313A of the DMG".