There’s a line from Cory Doctorow that lives rent-free in my head: “If you want to kick Elon Musk in the dongle, aim for his margins.” It’s crass, sure, but it nails a bigger idea why the web went bad. Platforms chase profit, feeds get louder, quality slips, and users feel like the product. But here’s the twist: even as big platforms slide into sludge, audiences haven’t lost their taste for specific, human stories. If anything, they’re hungrier for them.
Case in point: Wayward, Netflix Canada’s big swing this fall. It debuted in September and rocketed to the top spot first across Canada, then globally—beating out buzzy titles with A-list casts. On paper, it’s a drama about a fictional “troubled-teen” institution. On screen, it’s something knottier: a story about memory, control, and the pressure to be “okay” when everything inside you says otherwise. That clarity of focus—real people, real stakes—shows exactly what today’s audience leans toward when so much of the web feels like noise.
Let’s unpack both threads: why the web went bad, and how Wayward landed the kind of hit that algorithms can’t fake.
The Platform Problem (In Plain English)
We’ve all felt it. The early internet felt open and useful: search results lined up with intent; your feeds showed people you followed; marketplaces put the best match up top instead of a maze of ads. Then came the pivot. Suddenly, what you saw was… whatever paid to be seen.
Doctorow’s shorthand for that slow slide is famous now. I’ll stay family-friendly here, but the gist is: platforms start by treating users amazingly (cheap prices, clean feeds), then treat business customers amazingly (easy reach, low fees)… and when both sides are locked in, they squeeze everyone. Margins rise. Trust falls. That, in a sentence, is why the web went bad.
Here’s the hopeful part: even in that mess, audiences are rewarding work that feels honest and specific. Which brings us back to Wayward.
A Show That Gets Weirdly Real About Control—and Letting Go
Wayward centers on Tall Pines Academy, a fictional echo of the real “troubled-teen” industry that’s made ugly headlines for years. Toni Collette plays Evelyn, the school’s enigmatic leader. Mae Martin writes, directs, and stars as Alex. And Sarah Gadon plays Laura, a former student returning home to start a family—except the town, the school, and her own past won’t stay politely in the rearview.
When Gadon signed on, she’d just become a mother. Her first year wasn’t the storybook version anyone sells you—postpartum thyroid issues, a body that didn’t feel like her own, and waves of feelings that didn’t map to what new moms are “supposed” to feel. Instead of hiding that, the series uses it. Laura is a character carefully built to look “fine” from a distance—and then fracture up close. Gadon leans into that gap with a performance that’s both chilly and painfully earnest, the kind of work you get when an actor puts real life on screen without turning it into a diary.
And the production grounded her reality, too. They shot a lot in Etobicoke—Gadon’s home turf—so she could breastfeed between setups. That simple logistics choice fed the performance: the show lives in a version of Toronto that feels familiar, not generic “TV Anywhere.”
Why “Specificity” Beat the Algorithm
When a show explodes in the rankings, the lazy answer is “algorithm.” But listen to Gadon talk about what hooked viewers and you hear a clearer theme: specificity. People are done with vague vibes and recycled arcs. They want a window into a real system, a subculture, a place with rules. In Wayward, that’s the “troubled-teen” industry—its money, myths, and fallout. There’s a reason it hit number one: it teaches you something while it entertains, and it doesn’t lecture.
Contrast that with why the web went bad. Platforms thrive on the broadest possible bait—stuff that “engages” everyone just enough to keep them scrolling. A story like Wayward wins precisely because it resists that flattening. It’s about something. You can’t compress it to a seven-second clip without losing the point.
The Toads, The Ceremony, and the Cost of Erasing Pain
Yes, toads. In Tall Pines lore, the toad “medicine” fuels a ritual called the “leap,” sold as a cure for trauma—a clean slate. Whether it truly heals or conveniently erases becomes the show’s pulsing question. The toad becomes a symbol with two faces: transcendence on the brochure; amnesia in practice.
For Laura, the toad isn’t mystical; it’s a reminder of a severed thread. She did her “leap” as a teen and lost a part of herself she’s clawing back as an adult. There’s a stomach-turning scene—don’t worry, no toads harmed; a wrangler kept them safer than the actors—where confrontation with that symbol turns violent and surreal. The moment lands because it’s about agency: who gets to decide what healing looks like, and what we pay when we outsource it to a system that values quiet over truth.
That’s not miles away from why the web went bad, either. Platforms promise frictionless fixes—“We’ll sort your feed, we’ll ban the bad stuff, we’ll boost the good”—but hidden costs pile up: lost nuance, performative outrage, a feed tuned more to retention than reality. Erasing discomfort can be another way of erasing you.
A Birth Scene That Doesn’t Lie
One of the show’s most unsettling sequences is Laura’s labor. On the page, it started “TV-standard”: water gushes, constant screams, dramatic clockwork. Gadon, fresh from real delivery rooms, pushed for accurate beats—the trickle instead of a tidal wave, the grimy in-between of progress and stall, the animal sounds your body makes when your brain leaves the chat. They reworked it. The result is raw enough that even Gadon winced watching it back. But it’s honest. And that honesty fits the series: Wayward keeps swapping clichés for specific truths.
That choice—show it like it is—is the polar opposite of how platform feeds drift. Another tiny lesson in why the web went bad: when staging beats truth, trust rots.
Why Laura Goes Back (And Why That Choice Rings True)
When we meet Laura and Alex, they’ve moved to Tall Pines for the classic reason: home. She wants roots, family nearby, a fresh chapter in the place that formed her. Anyone who’s boomeranged back to their hometown knows that magnetic pull. You arrive riding a high, then the ghosts you packed so neatly in your twenties crawl out of the boxes.
Laura’s idea of “community as family” tilts from lovely to perverse as the series accelerates. But that seed—wanting a village—makes sense. And it’s why reactions to the finale split the audience: some viewers wanted simple justice, others embraced the knot. Gadon calls it “satisfyingly unsatisfying,” and she isn’t wrong. You get answers. You also get big question marks about who lived, who changed, and whether Laura’s the new force in charge—or just another person rationalizing control.
Fan theory corner: people are buzzing about whether Evelyn is Laura’s mother. Gadon won’t spoil it, but she hints at a deeper bond than the show states. Ambiguity can be cheap when it hides thin writing. Here, it lands because the characters are built to sustain it.
“I Was a Double-Life Teen” (Why That Matters On Screen)
Gadon doesn’t posture as a saint. As a teen in Toronto, she lived a double life: straight-A’s and extracurriculars by day; hidden rebellion by night. The “Ontario rite of passage” she laughs about—shoulder-tapping outside an LCBO, asking strangers to buy booze—became a kind of improvised acting class. Begging with a straight face, reading adults quickly, sensing who might help. It’s funny now, but you can see the through-line: she’s drawn to characters who look one way and crack another. That tension between public performance vs. private chaos makes Laura watchable even when she’s making terrible choices.
Real Work, Not Magic: How the Sausage Gets Made
A few production tidbits underscore the point. The toad scenes? Carefully choreographed movie magic drain gurgles, fake blood, pillows off camera, and handlers guarding the amphibians like royalty. The birth? Rewritten from a TV trope into something women messaged friends about after. The breastfeeding logistics? Not glamorous, but real—and it made the work better.
I love these details because they’re small rebellions against the squishy kind of content that’s taken over feeds. When creators sweat truth, audiences notice. It’s one antidote to why the web went bad.
So, Why Did Wayward Beat the Bloat?
Three reasons:
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It’s ruthlessly specific. A subculture with rules; a place that feels lived-in; rituals that mean something. Specificity cuts through algorithmic mush.
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It respects the audience. No homework lectures, just smart, chewy storytelling. You learn because you care.
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It swaps spectacle for honesty when it counts. The toad ritual, the birth, the messy shape of community—these feel observed, not engineered for a trailer.
Audiences are sending a message: if you give us work that treats reality with care, we’ll find it even when the feed is stacked.
Here’s What This Really Means
When you step back, Wayward is a tiny case study in how to win on a noisy internet without playing the game that made the web worse. It doesn’t chase every trend. It doesn’t sand off edges to maximize “engagement.” It picks a lane, goes deep, and trusts people will follow.
And that Doctorow line? It still applies. If platforms keep defaulting to squeeze over service, they’ll keep teaching viewers to look elsewhere—toward shows, newsletters, communities, and creators that value clarity over clickbait. That’s how you nudge the margins without ever touching a balance sheet: pay attention to the work that respects you.
My Take: Why This News Matters, What To Take Away, and How It Hits Real Life
Why it matters:
Stories like Wayward are proof that audiences reward specific, human work even as feeds trend the other way. That’s a north star for creators—and a signal to platforms that trust is a better long game than frictionless extraction. It’s also a quiet rebuttal to why the web went bad: you don’t fix a low-trust internet with more sludge; you fix it with careful, grounded work.
What to take away:
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Specificity beats generic “for everyone” mush.
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Honesty (even when it’s uncomfortable) is magnetic.
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You can build hits that don’t rely on algorithmic sugar highs.
How it affects you in real life:
As a viewer, you’ll waste less time if you chase work with a point of view. As a creator, you’ll build a more loyal audience by focusing on one real thing—place, subculture, lived detail instead of trying to be all things to all people. As a citizen of the internet, you chip away at why the web went bad every time you support the stuff that treats you like a person, not a metric.
So yes, the web’s gotten weirder. But if hits like Wayward keep topping charts, there’s your quiet revolution: less sludge, more signal and a reminder that the best fixes start with telling the truth well.
