Silicon is not a rock so saying that silica is not rare is irrelevant to the “rare rock” line.

Silica is indeed refined but the rocks that they refine to get the pure silica are indeed rare rocks. They only really refine the pure silicate that already start with super low impurities. relatively speaking. And the low trace elements impurities is what makes them rare.

These images are insane on my mobile Connect app. it’s eight screen lengths of scrolling to get to the reply button just for this one comment.