Okay, I’ll put my stank on the issue. 
Back in the day, flashlights kinda sucked. You had P60/P90/D25 drop-ins for those hosts, and early LEDs and drivers made them rather useful and used way less juice than their hotwire equivalents. Then came Roar Of Pelican and similar mods. Then drop-ins became The Thang, and people got into modding, because all you really needed was a soldering iron, the right parts, and thermal goop.
Old-timers like OL did some kickass mods on Mags, showing every step of the way, and that just inspired people to do similarly, even using the “human lathe” techniques, etc. Match-Mods turned Minimags to pretty awesome lights. Old Type-1 C8s and the S2s/S2+es let anyone do easy mods by just dicking with the pills instead of having to perform arthroscopic surgery on lights. People were modding like crazy, because you could get cheap hosts, pills/reflectors/drivers/stars, and roll yer own to your heart’s content.
Modders were the “shadetree mechanics” of the flashlight world.
But improvements were made. Integrated shelves on Type-2 C8s and other lights increased performance, but at the cost of making modding harder.
But then, revolutions in new lights gave us lights that could vomit out 1000lm with ease, whereas drop-ins had to break the sound barrier to get into quad-digits. But you were at the mercy of the manufacturer, because they’d glue the shiite out of everything, used retina-scorching CW emitters to wring out those few extra lemons, and just swapping the emitter, or trying to, could wreck the light. And mfrs were unresponsive to “enthusiasts” and wanted to cater to lumen-hounds and normies who just liked Big Numbers. Or worse, those who thought having strobes and SOS in the main cycle “added value” to the lights for zero cost.
But then we got into bed with Convoy, Sofirn, Wurkkos, and a few others, and could get the lights we wanted, without having to mod much if anything. Longpress for on/off was the norm, click-click-click to flick through the modes, ’til enough people started rearing up on their hind legs and howling for the reverse, which is exactly what happened. Boost converters for 6V/9V/higher LEDs came along. Pretty much every item in a wish-list was granted. Some even started using “enthusiast” UIs like andy1 and then andy2.
Point being, lights with sideswitches, sideswitches + tailswitches, plus onboard charging, etc., became the norm. You couldn’t just drop in a convenient 17mm or 20mm driver and be done with it. You had satellite boards for the sideswitches, charging circuits, etc. So lights were no longer moddable. UI? You couldn’t just load/buy muppydrv or whatever on a ’104C or anything, but had to reflash what was already there, if the µC was compatible.
No more shadetree mechanics, but needing scan-tools and mfr diagnostic codes and whatnot, well beyond what the average schmo was willing or able to do.
And no one even bothers to dedome LEDs anymore. No more discussions of heat- vs chemical-dedoming, or slicing, or whatnot. Now, it’s just swap for a 519, SST/SFT, whatever.
So now, modding is either out of reach of the average schmo, or no one wants to bother, or just no one wants to risk a light to get marginally better light.
Instead, we just harangue the mfrs for colors, finishes, materials. Someone wants Cu, someone else wants Ti, yet someone else wants SS, or brass, or…
Me? Yeah, I’m pretty much flashlighted out, unless something really good comes along. Everything else is just variations on a theme. Same light but in 21700 instead of 18650. Tailswitch + sideswitch vs just sideswitch. Blah blah blah.
I confess, I thought the WK30 was just a gimmick light, until I got one, and it became one of my all-time faves. The TS10, I initially poopooed because, “Who needs a triple in a 14500/AA light?”, until I had one in my grubby little hands. I couldn’t really care about überthrowers because most of what I do is close- to intermediate range, but I know they’re popular. But I don’t care in the slightest for “turbo” that lasts 4.75sec then drops down to 100lm immediately after. So something needs to really strike my fancy in order to get jazzed.
Soooooo, a lot of what made BLF what it is, was the old-timey modding threads, everything from OL-type mods, to dedoming discussions, how-tos as far as bettering thermal paths, optics, etc., even hacquing “moddable” lights that were simple enough to do. But todays lights are like modern cars, locked up behind CANbus interfaces vs discrete wires, not very moddable at all, where a simple change isn’t adding a switch and a few wires and relays, but having to entirely reprogram a body-control module or similar computer. Ie, forget it.
So today’s ideas of “modding” is what deep-carry clip will fit on a TS10, or superficial stuff like that, and no more “pencil tricks” to get rid of NMM, or sanding and hammering pennies to plug hollow shelves of SK98s. If we want light X to do something different, just buy light Y which pretty much does that already. Want a triple in an S2+, okay, you can get the spacers, optics, etc., and put it all together, hopefully… or you could just buy an E2L out of the box.
Oh, and let’s not forget that we used to have decent places to shop like BG and GB, getting loads of crap on the cheap, ’til they fizzled out. FT still has some awesome goodies, but they’re (as mentioned) good for modding older lights, not the newer crop of “unmoddables”.
We could always discuss politics, or the corovirus, or…
