Why my macOS Messages badge lied to me (and the one-line fix)

I will be the first to admit that I'm sometimes bad at responding to texts — but I'm not 112-unread-messages bad, as the notification badge on my Mac makes me out to be. It sits there mocking me, over a hundred messages that despite my best efforts I can never clear. No matter how many times I right-click to try and find them they remain tucked away somewhere, inactionable and yet unread, invisible yet demanding to be seen. "Look at me!" they shout. "You're missing out on the opportunity of a lifetime!"
I've ignored this in the past and tabled it for later: it must stand the test of time. But that time is now. Here's how I used lldb to reverse engineer Messages, found a bug in Apple's code, and fixed my badge.