I would tie the sudden demand and popularity of dark mode not with LCDs, but with the advent of flat design (Metro, Material, etc), which replaced the midtones of previous themes with stark, blinding whites and scarcely darker grays. The difference is particularly striking in iOS native apps pre and post-iOS 7 — iOS 6 and prior was even more midtone-weighted than its desktop contemporaries.

I was perfectly happy to use iOS 6, OS X 10.9 Mavericks, and Windows 7 without dark mode on LCDs, outside of code editors (there, I liked those dark even before because it makes syntax highlighting “pop” much better). It was only after those releases when I started wanting dark mode.

We have to get away from printer paper light mode themes.