It really depends on where you look. Tastes in the US are different from what's popular in Europe. It also depends on the audience. As an engineer I tend to levitate (fly?) towards the more technically sophisticated and challenging aircraft.
For example, I have been building and flying what used to be known as "F5B" aircraft. Back when we were using NiCd batteries I had planes that used 27 cells to power very compact multi-horsepower motors in these gliders that often are not any larger than about 2.4 meters in span. Back then (I am talking '80's '90's) these planes could climb out of sight in 5 seconds. They are, aerodynamically speaking, highly efficient. After the climb the competition consisted in completing as many laps of a circuit as possible without power, gliding at high speed. Once done, you get to use the motor again, climb to altitude and thermal (in some cases they don't to this). Finally, there's a requirement for precision landing --the closest to land to the center of a target the more points you earn.
Aside from that, I am very much into what some call "full house gliders", this to mean having a full set of control surfaces: two ailerons, two flaps, sometimes two spoilers, rudder and elevator. These are not typically high speed monsters. These days you use electric motors for the climb. I still have a winch (which was the traditional climb-to-altitude method) but have not used it in decades. With a full house glider the objective is to find and exploit thermals and, if in competition, usually have a precision landing just as explained above. I have had the experience of successfully thermalling for over two hours laying on my back listening to music, landing only due to just being tired more so than anything else.
There are a lot of great options these days to get into the hobby. You don't have to have a full-house glider to experience thermalling like a bird. One can get started with modest kits that are pretty much ready to fly. The more technically minded will eventually want to learn how to build from scratch or seriously modify aircraft (or both). While I haven't done it in a while, I used to regularly make custom planes using a range of materials, from balsa wood for normal performance planes to designing molds to vacuum-bag fiberglass, kevlar or carbon fiber designs.
Here are a few examples of the above:
F5B (I have several planes that look and perform just like these). The motor is only used to climb.
Adding to that, here's slope soaring, which is really cool. I haven't really done a lot of this due to having to travel far to have access to this type of geography. Beautiful silent flight, no motors required. They do add motors to some of the planes just so you have backup in case you lose lift. Here's an excellent intro to the sport:
And then there's the absolutely crazy/demented --in a good way-- dynamic slope soaring. I have yet to experience this. This is the domain of sophisticated carbon fiber and top-quality components. You can find videos of planes exploding in flight due to loads.
This is a long video with a detailed technical explanation of dynamic soaring:
that's neat, what is the sailplane community up to these days?