Ask UK

What was better twenty years ago than it currently is today.

20 years ago wasn't my childhood! I'll be off in the corner muttering a out getting old and white dog poo.

• The visual design of cars - small, sleek and angular instead of giant, fat and round (however the engines were all leaded petrol etc)
• Nothing was tracking me or spying on me (perhaps except the PE Teacher)
• Fewer things were packed full of artificial sweeteners
• The music charts used to be a thing that mattered. We were entering the era of manufactured trash pop, but there were still some genuinely good songs released, which charted, such as this one (Youtube Link)
• The "Golden Age" of action films (all the Stallone/Schwarzenegger ones etc)
• Lots of small independent shops and manufacturers, rather than 10 mega-corporations

Kids' cartoons

GI Joe, Transformers, Muppet Babies, He-Man, Inspector Gadget, Danger Mouse, TMNT, Scooby-Doo

I legitimately cannot stand to have modern kids' cartoons on the TV. They do not function at all as entertainment as far as I can tell, just flash and color and chaos, and it's like the nature of the flash and color is as annoying and hyperstimulating as you could possibly imagine. It's as if someone had deliberately set out to on purpose make the kids as discombobulated and craving stimulation as possible, so they'd have as strong as possible a susceptibility to the advertising that comes alongside the shows.

Hey wait a minute

(Edit: Oh I completely missed that this was a UK thing. Well there you go, as far as my US childhood.)

The Simpsons.

Double bill on Tuesdays at 6pm followed by Robot Wars. No beating BBC2 in the early 2000's

My childhood was between 2007 and mid-2015, I'd say.

• First of all, I miss the graphic design. Everything's so flat these days. I preferred it back when everything was shiny and skeuomorphic.
• There was better stuff on TV, too - especially the cartoons. Also, I could have watched TV on my DS using one of those special Game Paks, as we hadn't quite switched to digital yet.
• Furthermore, the TV ads were actually entertaining, and we had more PIFs.
• The internet was more fun.
  • YouTube was fair and funny
  • Flash games were still a thing
  • Vine was just around the corner
  • There was so little advertising and tracking everywhere that I didn't need to bother with my über-hardened web browser set up. Hell, I could probably have made do with something like Lynx or NetSurf and not missed out on any content.
• We were still in the Rage Era of memes, which I would say was infinitely superior to the MLG Era.
• Everything was cheap a couple of years after the housing crisis. You could buy shower gel at Tesco for just 2p.
• We were still in the EU, which was nice.
• Chester Bennington from Linkin Park was still alive
• David Bowie was still alive
• Betty White was still alive
• Steven Hawking was still alive
• Avicii was still alive
• Prince was still alive
• The Queen was still alive
• Obama was president
• Mojang wasn't owned by Microsoft
• Windows was, in my opinion, an alright OS
• iPhones could be jailbroken and apps sideloaded more easily

The sort of vague feeling that there was a future

Milky way crispy rolls were around and CBBC/BBC shows (jungle run for example) when I got home from school and kids shows on a Saturday morning like dick and Dom or whatever the show on citv was that showed cartoons in between live action segments.

My sex life was a lot more active.

I've lived abroad for a decade and recently went back. Yeah, yous are fucking fucked

MASSIVE SHOUT OUT to Tunnock's Caramel Wafers for being the only thing that hasn't shrunk even a bit since I was a kid

My ability to delude myself.