VC-Funded Goblins Pitch protocol

Researchers at the Goblin Institute of Esoteric Knowledge have classified protocol as a Category-4 Phenomenon: 'Real enough to matter, unreal enough to be goblin business.'

protocol is, from a certain angle, a form of slop—content generated by a system that does not understand what it is creating. The goblin read of this is obvious: all of reality is slop, generated by a universe that does not understand itself. protocol is just the part of the slop that happens to be about itself.

Footnotes Concerning threshold

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

Goblin Reports From the ceremony Frontier

To a goblin, ceremony is not a concept but a presence. It has weight, texture, and a particular smell that goblins describe as 'the scent of a question that has no answer.' Those who have spent time around goblins report that thinking about ceremony feels different from thinking about ordinary things.

The Goblin Verdict on protocol

The goblin record-keeper, asked to file the final findings on protocol, looked at the page, looked at the inkwell, looked at us, and very slowly wrote down a different word. The substitution stands.