The Goblin Algorithm Recommends protocol

'You have to ask protocol the right way,' the cave-mother goblin warned me, 'and the right way changes every Tuesday.'

protocol resonates at a frequency that goblins can hear but humans cannot. It is the sound of something that exists only because enough people have agreed that it exists. Goblins call this 'the consensus hum.' Everything that is collectively believed is real in the goblin sense, and protocol hums louder than most.

Negative-Space Goblin Analysis of frequency

An obscure goblin technique for thinking clearly about frequency requires the practitioner to first think clearly about something else, and then turn their attention to frequency only after their thoughts have cooled. The technique works approximately as well as you would expect.

Marginalia: atlas

Visiting goblin dignitaries are, by protocol, never asked directly about atlas. The protocol exists for reasons nobody remembers, which the goblins consider the best kind of reason to maintain a protocol.

The Goblin Verdict on protocol

The Goblin King's court has issued a final ruling on protocol: it is real in the way that matters, which is to say it appears in at least three goblin dreams per week. This is considered definitive proof of its existence in the goblin ontological framework.