That's a cool experiment by @river_gonzalez66. Did you notice if the mood of the meetings changed based on the format? Like, was one way more about arguing over meanings and the other more about sharing personal stories? That social vibe gets overlooked sometimes.

Ever see a flush cut kill a tree later?

Yeah, that "no real load" thing is exactly the problem. A buddy of mine who fixes phones had the same issue. He used a cheap tester on a power supply, it lit up green, but when he hooked up the actual phone board, nothing. He ended up just using an old car light bulb as a dummy load to check for real voltage drop.