I blame porn, and more generally, the desire for flashy colours in the consumer market. Circa 1990 we had 1600×1200 monochrome CRTs at work, and nothing I've used since has equaled them for text. Considering displays as effectively limited by signal bandwidth, colour forces a √3 drop in linear resolution.
>Circa 1990 we had 1600×1200 monochrome CRTs at work, and nothing I've used since has equaled them for text.
Really? I've used monochrome hi-res CRTs in the early nineties (made by SUN for its workstations nonetheless) and they were shite -- (not to mention the text rendering of the software at the time was shite too).
I actually think you're just seeing those things through rose-colored glasses. Try a modern 5K retina iMac or 4K dell monitor.