Social residue can accumulate into something much larger than the sum of its parts.

The Ouija Board effect comes from social residue accreting.

All of the little choices of users in the system leave extremely potent residue.

Each bit of residue is a mote of cosmic dust.

Not that useful on its own.

But enough of them together it can ignite into a star.

In a scaled system, the data the residue is attached to is less important than the residue itself.