Dark theme. Does it matter?
This tech ‘gizmo’ is nothing but another short-term pseudo-solution to Zero and one more step towards the Narnia of technology, that since facebook has given us… Nada.
DARK THEME
Well the dark theme rises.
Surely and rapidly, it gets around everything. google of course had it last. But even other email providers, like private, secure and whatnot, offer you the chance, at landing page, to switch to dark. After login, you get the whole session in night mode.
Like, I wrote this in WPS but not on dark mode.
I have a full dark or black desktop background, my mobile desktop background is also dark, my phone is black and my phone cover is…
NOT WHITE
So, once you have and buy black, you can never go back.
PHYSICAL PRODUCTS
I love some — not all — black vehicles and bikes.
And this is not carist or bikist, this is just personal taste. But I can guarantee that 80% of my top used apps have in-dark themes installed.
So gmail. Tutanota. For email providers. But I’m sure yandex does the same, perhaps protonmail does not.
Cloud storage: I know mega does not support it, just like pcloud. Portuguese platforms such as MeoCloud do not support dark ‘basic interface’.
Music: Neutron, the best music app Period — 64-bit, no less — is… black. Other apps such as NewPipe, that circumvents and is a lighter and safer version of youtube, goes absolutely black from splash screen to terms and conditions.
Youtube? Black.
Spotify? Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiit…
Tidal? Black and white logos.
Facebook? Recently became black.
It’s kinda weird when we had the color and the chance to choose blacker themes and interfaces like… since the dawn of emails and/or search engines.
Only in 2020, and very much powered by real-world situations — facebook going black for logo is not an innocent move… — when big brands tend to go 2 or 2+ colors (google because of functionality; Microsoft rolled back because of LinkedIn and pure and simple marketing) dark themes are the norm for the daily usage of most of our professional and personal tools.
I think it’s lame.
Lazy.
Command terminals, from MS-DOS to Linux Ctrl-Alt+T, are respectfully dark. I mean, for coders that’s their… ‘color code’. Even tech can be racist sometimes, who knew?!
Marketers go for splashy and warmer palettes.
Coders are doomed to binary boredom of black and white.
CEOs protect the sacred gray or ultra violet of their latest airpod launch.
VCs and business angels could not care less about the choice, as long as the color at the end of the year does not go red.
So, once and again, we are traveling in circles in terms of social evolution.
Br(e)aking us down to black and white isn’t going simpler, isn’t to make our laptop batteries last longer or our cellphones more eyesight-friendly.
It’s just marketing.
It’s just money.
They think about customers? Yes.
They think about usability? Of course.
Do they really care about how they treat our data, target their ads or if we’re using their products ‘correctly’, meaning, I dunno, we’re not using a Huawei full-on Dark Mode on all apps, going deep web to plan a… shooting? Going live on a social network that recently changed its logo?!…
THIS IS THE DARK AGES
“You have the option there, look at the option there, swipe right to make it black”, could be something Childish Gambino would sing.
But the truth is… we’re not going forward.
We’re not caring for one another.
Companies only care for themselves and the competition.
Kotler and Godin can talk all they want. And Gary Vaynerchuk can like and Tim Ferriss will share.
But marketers will be marketers… and colors is just ‘Another Task’ of one big real-game called
“Let us fool them All. Fast and furiously”.
Go Dark if you want.
Again, couldn’t care less…
