If you make something , mind your own business , and some random person comes and says looks outdated and crappyno matter if they are rightyou most people will say kthnx go fuck yourself and mind your own business . Particularly when they have no insight into what you are making . It doesn ' t mean you are touchy , it ' s an understandable haha wtf reaction . I didn ' t show my theme , I just presented a case for how clean dolphin can be . As a graduate student , I use my computer 8 hours a day , 7 days a week . I care not about how pleasant a theme is , what matters to me is that it doesn ' t grab my attention and distract me from what matters . This is why I made a monochrome theme with only one color outside of the grayscale . I also minimized my color hierarchy . Dark colors minimize eye strain while maintaining good contrast . 70 % of my applications are terminalbased . With all these variables in mind , I made a theme that blends seamlessly with the rest of my workflow . I ' ve never gotten tired of it . Every single aspect of the UX on my workflow has thought behind it . Not from an aesthetics point of view , but from a practical one . I use monospaced where it matters 70 % of my applications , but I find that aliased fonts on my lowdpi monitors distract me more than antialiased ones . It ' s not ideal , but for now it ' s a compromise made on the basis of subjectivity . I didn ' t spend days making all my interfaces look seamless , but I did spend hours . Dismiss them at will , but pretending that a dismissal from my side is touchy , is not very socially aware . Try it in real life , go to someone you don ' t know who is making something looks like shit and see what reaction you get . Happy Thanksgiving . PS While I don ' t particularly like any aspect of your theme , and have many criticisms , I do agree that lighter themes do look prettier .