Gentoo has many smart people. Having said that, I can't help but feel that ever since the rise of Arch, Gentoo lost a lot of grounds. This may not be primarily due to Arch, but it kind of felt that way to me. I feel that the Gentoo devs should really look at its main competitors such as Void or Arch, IMO. These seem to be more like a modern Gentoo, even if they are different and have a different focus too.
" There is just one branch that all Arch users use"
https://blogs.gentoo.org/mgorny/2024/08/20/gentoo-profiles-and-keywords-rather-than-releases/Arch is the reason I didn't choose Gentoo for my latest build. It's convenient and "good enough" for all my use-cases. Gentoo gives you the feeling of being fully connected to the computer like no other OS - the kind that leaves you nostalgic - but it also requires a time commitment.
I have heard rumors that at one point in time gentoo lost its forum - basically a catastrophic strike such as deleting Arch Linux wiki
Neither Void or Arch are a "modern Gentoo". Gentoo is it's own thing. If anything, Gentoo's closest "competitors" in terms of OS customisation would be NixOS or Guix, not Void or Arch, but Gentoo is forging it's own path, it doesn't need to follow any other distro.