An individual who plays Slide on repeat develops an appetite for being received without having to account for anything. The material pairs a lover's offer with an explicit promise to ask nothing, and repetition attaches relief to the presence of a person who withholds judgment. Absolution comes to feel like intimacy.

Receptivity to unconditional regard strengthens. The listener grows readier to extend presence to someone in disgrace and readier to accept it, while escape, a marriage or a departure, acquires the standing of a remedy. Loyalty comes to mean the withholding of a verdict.

A society that takes Slide into common circulation grows more willing to stand beside the disgraced. Collective rehearsal of a lover's refusal to interrogate establishes discretion as the recognized form of devotion, and the parties issuing the verdict, a church and a family, come to occupy the antagonist's position in an intimate story. Shelter becomes the accepted proof of love.

People cover for one another more readily through private ruin, and the social cost of condemnation rises. Departure acquires legitimacy as a response to disgrace, and the collective capacity to conduct a reckoning in the open contracts. Silence circulates as a form of care.