How did it happen that the thing which was supposed to bind us together is the thing that drove us apart? What if (digitally) leaving the neighborhood to associate with like-minded people actually increases our loneliness, instead of ameliorating it?

There is a better option: stay in place, and associate with people different than you. Bari Weiss and Eve Peyser are trying it out- getting together, not to fight about things they disagree with, but to live in the physical world, and eat physical bread. As critics have pointed out, this sort of relationship is hard, its costly, and there is only one thing that can sustain it: the meal with the God who left the place of power, comfort and authority, and moved into our neighborhood (John 1).