> I’ve never met a person saying they hate books and wish they were white on black.

I've never seen a book actually radiate its own light. Perhaps if there had been 600+ sq. inch self illuminating books, we might have invented dark mode long ago.

During the early days of CRTs, dark mode was the norm. VT50/100/220, 3270 etc. were almost always dark with illuminated characters, and even when not, they were only ~12-14" diagonal, and there was only one. Most PC/DOS machines were the same. The moment raster displays appeared, everything went "light mode," but they still weren't very large. Then, displays got huge and multiplied, easily able to overwhelm human eyes with excessive power.

The ~30-year detour into Apple/Microsoft's paper-mimicry is ending due to basic ergonomics. No need for your tut-tutting.