The size of Freddo's, Saturday morning TV, free to air sports, Jamie Oliver-less school lunches. You get the picture.
What was better twenty years ago than it currently is today.
And you can't say everything, because it wasn't. The country is in ruin but at least now we can.........order a takeaway without having to speak to another human...??
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
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.)
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
I like them because, until I was old enough to watch the real thing, these were as close as I could get to horror films. They can get pretty scary, especially considering they're warning about real things (as opposed to monsters or fictional murderers).
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.