Cyber-Grooming: AI-Mediated Phatic Communion and the Ritual Evacuation of Semantic Content

We develop a sociological account of how AI-mediated cognitive decoupling is insti- tutionalised and rendered invisible through ritual practice. Drawing on Malinowski's phatic communion, Collins's interaction ritual chain theory, Goman's dramaturgi- cal framework, and Baudrillard's theory of simulacra, we argue that the Expansion Compression (EC) loop identied in Paper 0 does not merely fail to transmit se- mantic content it actively substitutes a social ritual for a communicative act in a manner that is experienced by participants as fully equivalent to, or superior to, genuine intellectual exchange. We introduce the concept of cyber-grooming: the use of AI-mediated content pro- duction and consumption as a mechanism for maintaining social bonds, signalling group membership, and accruing social capital, in the absence of genuine cognitive engagement. Like primate grooming which consumes up to 20% of waking time not for hygienic but for social bonding purposes cyber-grooming performs no epis- temic function but sustains the emotional energy that holds intellectual communities together. We propose a formal model of the Interaction Ritual Chain under AI Mediation (IRCAM), adapting Collins's mathematical framework to account for the decoupling of emotional energy ow from semantic content ow. We prove that IRCAM pro- duces a ritual trap: once a community has adopted AI-mediated exchange as its norm, defection to authentic exchange is individually costly and collectively invis- ible, creating a stable ritualistic equilibrium with zero informational content and positive social aect. We further apply Baudrillard's four-stage model of the sign to characterise the simulacrum succession of intellectual content in the AI era. Empirically, we develop six observable signatures of cyber-grooming that distinguish it from genuine intellec- tual exchange, and propose research designs using digital platform data, discourse analysis, and experimental methods.