"I suspect you're just being snarky"
I am not. I don't think Material Design is a good thing.
"If you compare apps before and after Material I think you'll find more recent ones are more consistent."
Well, sure, but I'm also bitten by the downside of that. If a design you find to be suboptimal becomes "standard", then sure, you get consistency -- but all that means is that most of the apps you want to use are irritating and hard to use.
In other words, UI consistency across applications is a serious downside if you find that UI to be objectionable.