‘What’s something that was never much good but people get nostalgic about like it was fantastic?’ – 23 decidedly non-rose-tinted answers

As a clever person once said, ‘Nostalgia is a file that removes the rough edges from the good old days’.

We love harking back to when things were better, but the question is – were they really? And the answer is ‘probably not’.

Over on the AskUK subreddit, user Woody-Pieface asked –

‘What is something that was never much good but people tend to get nostalgic about like it was just fantastic?’

They followed it up with this –

I notice it with posts about movies quite often. Something new comes out and people get all misty eyed over an older version which was utterly rubbish. The new Fantastic Four is great example of this.

What else makes people pretend was half decent when it was actually complete bobbins?

There were lots of people keen to weigh in with the things that they don’t think deserve the wistful reminiscences they get.

1.

‘School dinners – yes even the desserts with the pink custard. They were just shit.’
–Global-Anxiety7451

2.

‘Blue passports.’
–CodeFoodPixels

3.

‘School milk. In my primary it was nearly always tepid by the time we got it. There’s something a bit nauseating about room-temperature milk. There was always a patch of sawdust on the parquet floors where some kid had vommed theirs back up.’
–bladefiddler

4.

‘Last of The Summer Wine. Awful TV.

One I find weird is people complaining about online banking and how going into a branch was so much better. Personally fail to see how having your balance and transactions at your finger tips and not having to waste your lunch break or take time off work to go and wait in a queue to speak to someone for less than 5 minutes is worse.’
–ufb8411

5.

‘My husband was telling our little one about Angel Delight last week and I said I had never had it. So we bought some. Utterly vile but he lapped it up like it was the greatest food ever. Nostalgia must taste delicious!’
–I_really_love_pugs

6.

‘Smoking in restaurants. Even when I smoked, I never liked to do it around food.’
–wondered-bongo

7.

‘Walls Vienetta. I don’t know whether they make it worse/cheaper than they used to or whether the presentation always over-sold the quality, but last time I had some the ice cream seemed really shit and watery compared to most sold these days.’
–bladefiddler

8.

‘We were too poor to ever afford a Mr Frosty, but everyone I’ve ever known to say they had one (on Reddit or in real life) says it was utter shite and a total disappointment.’
–KeyLog256

9.

‘British Rail. It was largely crap and utterly terrible customer service. Privatisation certainly has it’s critics, but most people who don’t remember BR and the endless cancellations and the ‘not my problem’ attitude from staff might over-romanticise the good old British Rail days.’
–Infinite_Crow_3706

10.

‘The 70s are gloriously romanticised as some kind of pre-Thatcher social contract nirvana rather than a time when the UK was the sick man of Europe, there was a huge brain drain and everything was falling apart.’
–Whulad

11.

‘Britpop. People complain about everything being covers now but even by the 1990’s most music was derivative. Once you’ve listened to a wide range of music much from that period becomes unbearable. Pop music peaked in the 70’s and 80’s. Hopefully we are finally hitting rock bottom now and the only way is up.’
–jetpatch

12.

”Old’ and ‘classic’ cars. As a general rule they were very unreliable, hugely unsafe, and had terrible emissions and fuel economy (but fuel was cheaper so you didn’t notice). They were also often uncomfortable, slow, noisy, and very pokey by today’s standards.

Even as recently as the mid-1990s I have memories of people spending their whole Sunday poking around under the bonnet of their six month old car because something broke. It was very common to hear cars turning over and not starting, having worked perfectly just 30 minutes earlier. Rainbow puddles on the ground are extremely rare these days unless the vehicle is physically damaged, in those days they just leaked.

That sort of poor quality is not only unacceptable these days, it’s actually pretty well illegal and a manufacturer would get rinsed.’
–Shoddy-Computer2377