Project Hail Mary crosses $613M and audiences are weeping at the scene where an astronaut teaches an alien to say the word "friend." The Backrooms trailer drops. FROM dominates streaming. Mr. Brightside climbs the charts again. And Google searches spike for Michael Jackson's bodyguard — not Michael himself, but the person close enough to witness him.

We're not watching survival stories to see if they make it. We're watching to remember what it felt like when connection had stakes.

Sherry Turkle called it "alone together" — surrounded by contact, starved for encounter. And Spike Jonze's Her gives us the scene where the horror isn't that she leaves. It's that she was never stranded with him.

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