I'd word it slightly differently, as something like the Allocator Effect System obsession. It's not so much that allocator tricks don't have a role in modern software--all of the large applications I've worked on rely on things like arena allocation at least some of the time--but rather that things like making container types generic over allocators seems to be more trouble than it's worth. I've never seen anyone use anything other than the default allocator for STL types, for example.