system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
How do attractive forces actually work?

For example gravity, magnetism and electrostatic. Do particles pull towards each other by some link like an elastic band or do they emit particles in the opposite direction to each other to push them together (if so how do they know to do that?) or is it something else entirely?
gpt
It seems you are being confused by considering virtual particles as being anything at all like actual particles. They are not. Thinking of virtual particles like this is nice for being able to draw Feynman diagrams but not really for anything else.