Unpopular Opinion
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Paper uses pigments, it just reflects the ambient light. Screens however actively emit light.
Let's compare screens to sky. What is easier for your eyes, to stare at a flying airplane during daylight, or to watch stars at night?
It's only over if you contractually agree to only ever read anything on paper with a flashlight held directly behind the pages shining light through the paper right into your face.
Ok I actually read the article and was not satisfied with what I saw. The zapier and wired article links to some hella outdated literature (screens have improved a lot from 1998 and 2003 screens).
In the articles you also linked, they also said blue light has more of an effect on eye strain. Age may also be a factor (no shame in getting old). Here's an obligatory article presenting a case on the usage of dark mode. Honestly, it's a not too well researched topic. There's research for and against the use of dark mode.
It all comes down to personal preferance. You can't just go up to a person and say "Hey fuckwit, your theming is wrong". That's universally considered rude. Though if you want to reduce eye strain, it all comes down to blue light level. You can also use e-ink screens however, screen latency is still an issue there.
I just wanted to put articles that conflict with your links. People might see it and say "Ohhhhh I'm gonna switch to light mode because this guy has shiny blue links". Reader, please, do as you please. Also, don't reply to this.
No
You are a funny person. So the discomfort I get from the light a screen emits when the screen is predominantly white is not there because the wire wrote that dark mode doesn't make you blink more often?
And your argument about paper being white is suddenly fitting because people who enable dark mode and like it better never did that because of light even if that is what they say they did it for.
But hey, if you want to get irrationally angry because some people use a button you don't like to use on their computer, you do you I guess...
No one in this discussion claimed that any mode was objectively better, they just told you why people use dark mode. If you portrait yourself here like you did in the support thing you are so bitter about, the reason you didn't get any help was not your screen color setting, just saying.
I don't know why you seem to really need light mode.to be objectively better, but this topic no one gives a flying f about seems to be really important to you. What a weird hill to die on. For the record: I don't care who uses what stinking color mode. It's literally one click so treating that shit as some sort of fundamental decision is bullshit either way. I (and everybody else here) just.told you why we use that mode. That's all.
I only chimed in because your paper argument was blatantly missing the point and you acted all arrogant about it nonetheless.
Final remark: your "articles" are op-eds without any citation or data so they qualify as "anecdotal" at best. So if you want to lead this discussion with empirical evidence, why don't you go first, eh?
Screens showing white pixels do in fact not emit more light than when they emit dark areas. You heard it here first, folks
I can't disprove any findings that the article never claims. I just read through all three of those. That was the biggest waste of time I did today.
Nothing in those articles stated any evidence or facts(article 2 doesn't even talk about dark mode past the first paragraph btw, it transitions into blue light and calling it dark mode). Nothing was peer-reviewed. None of them even took a side.
That being said, I decided to do some research of my own on the college portal, it doesn't seem like there is much actual research on the matter period. The closest thing I could find is a study indicating that usage of dark mode can cause you to be more honest, which i have saved to read later because that sounds interesting.
What I do know is, I could barely read article 1 and 3 due to the text on the screen. I actually have a headache from the strain of the black text on white background. I really don't understand how people can do that. Like sure white text on black screen can be a pain at times as well but, at least it doesn't give me a headache. It's not like dark mode implementations are white on black, most of them are a white on grey or a grey on black to allow for a lesser adjustment, it's OLED themes that do pitch black with white text. I can do dark theme any day, my eyes hurt with OLED themes
If we’re talking adaptation, then ‘centuries’ is fairly irrelevant given how long our generations are…
Also, hasn’t it really only been a small number of centuries where reading has become a regular and critical function for the majority of the population?
Combine that with the fact that it’s long been easier/cheaper to make a uniformly light-coloured ‘paper’ and dark ink, than the reverse.
Using our history of dark-text might just be allowing the technology of the times to drive the future.
A more interesting comparison might be that we started with dark displays and light text (amber and green-screens) and moved to white displays with dark text later on.
Was that change due to a desire to mimic the paper medium?
Was it down to the quality of displays at the time (light bleed on CRTs might have driven this flip from dark to light once uniformity and brightness reached useful levels)?
Or was it because more people prefer dark text over light?
Regardless I’d like to finish by virtually girding my loins, brandishing my digital spear, and warning everyone that they’ll have to pry dark-mode from my cold-dead hands.
Paper doesn't emit light. It's not the same thing at all.
It's literally 100% exclusively about where the light is coming from.
Combined, those articles link to one actual bit of research where they tested in a dark room with participants 6 fucking feet away from a 24 inch dim screen. That's not even sort of representative of the real world.
But... all of those have to do with light (and are mostly clickbaity articles that do admit in the body of the thing that dark mode does reduce eye strain, limit battery drain on most handheld devices and lower the impact of blue light). When your big argument against dark mode is "well, it's less eye-searingly uncomfortably, so it may induce you to use an application too much" I think us dark mode defenders can rest our case.
Nah, you can absolutely just... prefer light mode. Besides this being the "unpopular opinion" magazine (which is to say, we're all here to be called out on our unpopular hills to die on, it's part of the fun), the colors you use for your websites are up to you. The only objective thing that matters here is that having a toggle available is better than not having a toggle and being locked to one or the other.
Buuuut, it's also true that the articles you're referencing are pretty bad and don't quite say what you seem to say they say. Those two things aren't mutually exclusive. I'm not annoyed at you for that. I'm mostly annoyed at the way media misreports scientific studies, honestly.
You're the only butthurt in the replies.