Ted Lasso and the Internet

The other day I stumbled onto a Reddit thread. I don’t usually visit Reddit, but I was searching for information about a gift card fundraiser my Member of Provincial Parliament was running for local families who’d lost their homes in a fire, and someone had posted the flyer on Reddit, others following up on how the fundraiser sounded like a scam (which it’s not, since I’d been emailing my MPP directly about it) and it just occurred to me how everybody on the internet always knows everything all the time, especially when they don’t, and maybe this is the very worst thing about the internet altogether (which is saying a lot).

This idea underlined during the brief moments I’ve spent—before I sensibly manage to pull myself away—reading comments on posts about obnoxious right wing protests, how little chance those commenting (on either side!) are giving themselves or those who disagree with them to listen and learn, to think and consider. How nobody is curious, and how those who support the protests are prone to knee jerk defensiveness, which results in things being irrevocably stuck.

I’m thinking too about how years of writing on the internet has reprogrammed my brain so that I’m consistently taking up the pose of expert, how I can barely know anything without considering turning those ideas into a listicle of life hacks.

And how even movements that began with best intentions—like women owning their authority and using “Dr” in their Twitter profile if they possess such a title, but how that’s led to a whole bunch of “Doctors” peddling misinformation about vaccination. (I’m looking at you, Member of Parliament for Haldimand—Norfolk.)

How nobody is asking questions, unless they’re “just asking questions,” and we know what that’s all about.

How nobody is ever asking questions that they don’t (think they) know the answers to already.

Which brings me to Ted Lasso. (Do all journeys eventually arrive at this place?)

A show I resisted watching because everyone promised that I would love it, and I do not like being told what to do (which connects to the overall idea of this post in a curious way…) but then I had a nervous breakdown in mid-December and all my plans to spend the holidays watching bleak murder mysteries went out the window, and watching Ted Lasso became part of my convalescence, and it turned out that everyone was right, for once.

I loved Ted Lasso so much. On Ted Lasso, no one knows anything—Ted himself, most of all. AND THAT’S OKAY. Because when you mean not knowing with curiosity, that’s where amazing things can happen. It’s where you grow and learn and connect, and discover fascinating things about yourself, and others. Curiosity leading to wonder and awe, which are two more elements thoroughly missing from online discourse.

Sometimes I think that the appeal of online rage is that it’s the closest the internet ever brings us to really feeling anything.

And so I’ve been thinking a lot about how I want to inject everything I do online with a spirit of curiosity, and exploration. Drilling out, not down—this is a different kind of curiosity than what you might see on neighbourhood groups racially profiling passers-by or Reddit threads trying to prove that local celebrity so-and-so is cheating on his spouse. A spirit of curiosity that leads to connection instead of disconnection, a spirit of curiosity imbued with generosity and which exists to make the world larger instead of so small that it can even be tucked away inside a flat rectangular device that you might carry around in your purse or pocket.