There I was, scrolling through the Briefcase App™ (aka LinkedIn), when discourse from an email thought leader brought my scrolling to a brake‑squealing stop:
”Is it just me, or is it true that 90% of email design questions are people asking how to defeat dark mode?,” asked deliverability specialist Al Iverson.
As a self-appointed Dark Mode antagonist and holdout who’s had an otherwise perfectly constructed brand email undone by the interface’s inconsistent implementation across platforms and devices, I could immediately relate to Iverson’s prompt.
And after musing on the post for a moment, I sought to visualize their question the best way I knew how—by bouncing over to imgflip dot com and creating a DOOM‑inspired meme that leaned all the way into the final boss video game metaphor.
Behold, Dark Mode versus its long multitude of email marketing foils: Brand, Figma, the stressed‑out Junior CRM Specialist just trying to QA Monday’s blast at Email On Acid before logging out on a busy Friday afternoon (to name but a few).
Dumb? Of course. Funny? That’s debatable. Accurate? Eh, who knows. But a few other folks found it amusing, and another even reposted it in their feed, where it drew one more round of LOLs and spawned the quotable that headlines this very post (thanks, Lori!).
Somewhat lost in the noise back on the OP? This insightful analysis from James Lamb, another email professional and channel stakeholder:
“
Dark Mode is a missed opportunity for some kind of documented standard shared by all mailbox providers.
And also my hope for a future lawsuit. You could never invert someone’s billboard or their video on Netflix or open someone’s postal mail and draw on it, but subverting the design and ruining the aesthetic of an email is ok. And it’s not just ok, but with no way to combat, control or even work with it since it works differently on every client and they’re mostly not documented.”
Sign me up as a co‑plaintiff in this class action suit, because someone needs to banish Dark Mode to a shadowy UAC abyss where it can’t invert anyone’s gradients ever again.
xoxo
—Travis