[setopt]

Isn’t that distinction more philosophical than not?

Like the Feynman diagram is in any case that a photon is transmitted between two charged objects, whether that photon is “real” or “virtual”.

I know there are physicists who interpret this as there being two distinct things, either particle-like excitations (photons) and more general excitations (not photons). These usually don’t think of Feynman diagrams as representing anything real.

But I also know there are some physicists who consider virtual photons “real”. And in that picture of reality, all EM interaction is “light”.