Social.

Ten stories, one pattern underneath all of them: technology keeps promising closeness and mostly delivers a very convincing simulation of it. A viral couple's video racked up 200 million views for looking like real love. An AI voice clone cost families a collective $893M in a single year by sounding exactly like someone's daughter. A rental-family industry in Japan fills the seat at the table when the real relative won't.

Some of these stories cut the other way — a baby seeing city lights for the first time, a stranger who bought a plane ticket for someone he'd never met. The thread is the same either way: what happens to a feeling once a platform, an algorithm, or a stranger's generosity gets involved.

5 billion people use an AI companion app. A billion of them report feeling lonelier, not less.