Personally, unfortunately the more exposure I've had to the "Modern C++" community, the more I feel like it's dogmatic, cargo-cult, and obsessed with "best practices", which really puts me off. It looks like a manifestation of the second-system effect compared to C, which I'd characterise as a simple, pragmatic, and humble language. Then again, I've always thought OOP was oversold and that may have something to do with it.

That is not to say I fundamentally dislike the language itself; C++ certainly has some very useful features compared to C, and I sometimes wish I could make use of them when I'm writing C too, but the "C++ is so much better than C, C is bad" and all-too-common "some bloke named Herb says X, so you must follow him" sort of attitude coming from self-proclaimed "Modern C++" developers I find rather distasteful. I don't care about purity or adherence to any perceived "expert opinion", I just want to use the features of the language that make it easier and simpler to solve a problem more efficiently (and likewise, not use the features which don't help)... which is what programming languages ultimately are for, and yet I feel much of the "Modern C++" community has missed that point.

Could you describe what/who you think this is, because I don't really see a community as a whole for who the points you make are valid. Sure there's some crazy purists everywhere, but in general I don't think it's as bad as you mention. Then again might be biased because I write way more C++ than C.

I know cherry-picking isn't usually the most fair way to discuss, but some things really strike me as unfair so I can't help it.

obsessed with "best practices"

not sure if this is really bad? When pushed to the extreme it is, but that goes for anything extreme, but I don't really feel the C++ community is like that. At least I've read many times things in the spirit of 'best practices ar good, follwing them blindly is not'. Also anecdotally from all colleagues I ever worked with those with some healthy amount of (as in, still being able to think critically) obsession with trying to Do The Right Thing, always wrote better code than those who lacked that

OOP was oversold

it surely was, but imo one of the things modern C++ teaches us is exactly that: OOP overuse is bad and you don't have to use OOP at all in C++ if you don't want to

"some bloke named Herb says X, so you must follow him" sort of attitude

which is in turn countered by an attitude of questioning everything, no matter if the author is called Herb or Bjarne, and I don't think I'm dreaming that (at least I've seen many questions on SO starting with 'in xxx Herb says y, wtf is that all bout?'). On the other hand, those guys' advice is usually golden so following it won't hurt much, as long as you don't blindly follow it.

I just want to use the features of the language that make it easier and simpler to solve a problem more efficiently

in the end everybody wants this I guess, and I do have the feeling that when searching for questions to typical problems I usually do get an answer telling me exactly what to use. Also take https://github.com/isocpp/CppCoreGuidelines for example: sure theres a whole lot of info but it does give a ton of good/bad examples, plus reasoning behind it