What the arXiv-to-Reddit divergence reveals is not a communication failure but a positional one. Researchers publishing on AI capability are not wrong about what the technology can do in controlled conditions. The communities reporting frustration are not wrong about what the technology does to their feeds, their job searches, their inboxes. Both descriptions are accurate, and they are describing different objects. The Stanford AI Index's documentation of this split gives it institutional weight, but the split predates any index — it is visible in the ratio of academic enthusiasm to…