Concierge Service

Keeping NPCs between the narrative lines with a smile or some rage porn.

CSA Images, Concierge, 2021, print

Note: This post looks at a form of narrative engineering within the House of Lies. It does not claim that the different factions in the House are equally terrible. They aren’t. Simply stopping mass migratory invasion is sufficient to differentiate them. What it claims is that neither face reality nor have the best interests of we the people at heart. What it asks is putting aside false binaries and stepping outside.

An old scam resurfaces from time to time. Apparently it’s popular in touristic areas these days, despite the internet existing. The best known forms - Three Card Monte and the shell game/three cups use playing cards or a hidden object respectively. The principle is the same. One of the three is different and the player has to choose it to win. Pick wrong and you lose.

The thing is, it’s not the game it presents itself as being.

The reality is that there’s no path to winning because the game is rigged. It’s actually a sleight of hand scam where different tricks are used to move the object from under the cup or hide and plant cards. The obvious message is not to play. But the point for this post is the second layer of the scam. The accomplices who pretend to be part of the onlookers.

When the game is set up on the street, there’s always a group around. Some are naturally curious passers by, like the group around a busker.

Max Ginsburg, Three Card Monte, 1979, oil on canvas

But some are shills - collaborators who support the illusion of a real game. They “win” bets to encourage others to try. They jump in, outbid, and win if someone real guesses right. They watch out for authorities and give heads up. In other words, they’re part of the con while appearing to be on the side of the players or audience. And their role is to persuade the skeptical that the scam is what it appears to be.

What brought this to mind was something I’ve noticed online - ever since aspects of the House of Lies started getting called out. Obviously “truthers” go back much further. But it was more recently that the potential for widespread exposure to alternatives took off. The House responded in different ways - deplatforming and banning being common. But those do bring their own attention and drive creation of alternatives.

Sensationalistic fakes like the 🚨 booms!! 🚨 and “two more weeks” that are mocked here are misdirection pacification. Fake reports of action that never go anywhere but keep NPCs locked into the story. The limit with those is obvious in how they’re mocked. When never happening recurs enough, it can seep into NPC base codes. The point isn’t to demoralize, it’s to maintain buy-in.

Enter the narrative concierge.

Lyonel Feininger, Carnival in Arcueil, 1911

This is a subtler brand of shill that exploits limited NPC memory but with less friction from sensationalism. Like a fake player in a shell game. The mark is an NPC whose base code shows some awareness that the mainstream narrative is false. But can’t really extrapolate that knowledge to all the other lies that have piled up over the last 50-100 years and rotted out the whole system. The sort who might be swayed by the current “communist” idiocy while ignoring financialization, invasion, and the foreign capture of Congress.

What the narrative concierge does is maintain a continuous narrative based on the system being able to self-repair. Whether by voting the right talon of the beast, or waiting on a mysterious cadre of good guys who are always an election away from “setting things right”. Like Good King Richard in Robin Hood, if he were gay as well as fake. They never tell you how it’s going to happen or note that in-system rejuvenation has never happened. Just a lot of rhetoric based on older myths and lies from earlier stages of the decline curve.

You can tell them by how their claims have shrunk since the last election without ever acknowledging what hasn’t happened. And how various information tweets and booms are presented as the same as real material change, but never followed up to see what actually came of them. A good example from a recent post is the return of MRNA and mandates. Or the continued active involvement in the Ukraine war. Or repeating House lies about Iranian “nukes” then dropping that canard altogether while cheerleading forever war. Or any of the ongoing assaults on data privacy from mass rollouts of Flock cameras to increasing tracking and monitoring in home electronics.

I could go on, but readers get the picture. A narrative concierge fosters the idea that major problems are being fixed without empirical confirmation. When the reality is that the same trajectories are continuing. Reposting a tweet about election irregularity isn’t establishing an honest plebiscite. Or leaving out key things. Like writing about labor force participation without mentioning the incentive destruction covered in a recent post.

They’re effective because they arbitrage the difference between real narrative structure and binary thinking idiocy. Occupying that gap between how the mark thinks the system works and the reality. Most NPCs believe there’s a substantive difference between parties that maps onto governing intentions. Appearances to the contrary having zero impact. Let that sink in for a minute. Now consider the actual hierarchical structure of the House of Lies. NPCs engrossed in the puppet show literally can’t conceptualize the puppeteer, the theater and its ownership, the playwright, any of it. Punch and Judy are two real enemies.

All the concierge has to do is tell them what each side did next.

This isn’t disseminating factual information, it’s blocking it. The rare times affordability, financialization, or invasion do get touched on, it’s an unrepresentative anecdote. NPCs aren’t capable of distinguishing the anecdotal from the statistical. A single vignette creates the same impression of positive change as legitimate statistical analysis. Maybe more so, since statistics are hard to understand and anecdotes register emotionally.

A legitimate discussion of mass fraud includes how many have been prosecuted or deported and what prospects for more. Or more importantly, how it’s been shut off. A legitimate discussion of election manipulation takes up the realities of a system where it is permitted and what real remedies are in play. A legitimate discussion of electoral stakes deals honestly with what didn’t happen the last few goes. That is, answering what should be the natural questions were the audience sentient.

Narratives need consistent characters or the NPCs get confused. It’s related to the rhetorical appeal of anecdote. It’s why boogiemen like Ilhan Omar and “the Dems” are eternal, with perpetual criminality that’s never resolved, but always outrageous. When the reality is that perpetual, never resolved fruits of a system define what the system actually is. The only point of continually pointing out a cousin-marrying fraud sits in Congress is to occasionally spasm the frog leg with a tweet that never amounts to anything. What an honest platform, like, say, this one, does is think about what to do when that is the system. And not breed faith in a corrective that isn’t coming.

Frederick Burr Opper, “The fin de siècle newspaper proprietor,” Puck Magazine, March 7, 1894. Note the date. It is not a new problem…

Another steady boogieman is an old favorite. The mainstream media. Pointing out hypocrisy with nothing actually happening. By this point, if the idea that a perpetual blanket of lies and disinformation isn’t a systemic feature hasn’t sunk in, you’re part of the problem. The answer was always to network reality facing sites, not other controlled opposition.

Here are a few more tells. I’m sure readers can come up with more.

• Never acknowledge the systemic changes over the last few decades, the systemic corruption that makes them possible, or the actual control structures. Financialization, invasion, mass surveillance are all relatively new. Anyone pretending the game is the same as in the 80s is a liar.

• Reinforce beast meta-narrative, like the Iran debacle not being a debacle.

• Support ludicrous psyops. “They” tried to kill him x many times, so now he’s …¹ And if launching dishonorable to the point of disgusting sneak assassinations under flag of parley is cool, “concierge” becomes “human garbage”. An unstated part of echoing House of Lies narrative is lowering the ethical bar.

• Never, ever follow up on rhetorical pulses when they fall apart. The idiocy and cronyism around the reflecting pool is a case in point. Concierges loved the “pool guys” story. Until the debacle blew up. Then crickets.

• Pretend beast media tags like “conservative” mean anything substantive. The concierge reinforces House of Lies narrative roles. Where anti-nationalists like Ben Shapiro or Bari Weiss are “of the right” and worthy of support from reality facers.

• Rage porn about what “the left” are doing without a coherent definition of what they are. Or noting that a system that makes them possible is not what they claim.

• Misrepresenting conflicts. Like endlessly reprinting a decade old picture of long retired Merkel scowling at Trump and convicted criminal hire Bolton, but not this year’s photos. Repeating a base code marker reinforces a narrative impression. It has no reflection on current socio-politics.

• Pretending a tweet with no consequence is a “response” to a policy failure. Emotional swings are indistinguishable from objective reality for NPCs.

• Endless pictures of the laser pointer villains with obnoxious expressions. Obama has played this role for years. Crazy Eyes Barrett, the anchor baby hero being the latest.

And above all…

Never preaching the necessity of self-reliance and organic community.

The last one is the deeper tell. The common thread running through all narrative reinforcement. Keeping potential strays in the House pen. Waiting for magic deliverance from the system that’s responsible for the problems in the first place. NPCs follow narrative direction. It’s why a healthier society has better citizens. An actual reality-facing narrative would impact behavior and eventually base codes.

Frank Lastverse, Digital Prison, 2026, pencil drawing

So what’s the point of concierge service? It’s easy to list tells, but there must be some motivation other than subs and clicks. Maybe not for them, but for the beast system to keep them around. We know how effectively it can strangle reach when so motivated. One answer is pretty obvious when you think about it. Keeping the NPCs in-House where they won’t cause trouble. Hate-following the characters and invested in the fake election game. And never getting narrated into making an organic difference.

Thought experiment. Imagine if the screens started emphasizing pro-social, reality-facing ideals. Self-reliance. Community investment. Helping your kids. Multi-generational resource planning. Some NPCs would start to follow. Screen says… We might get nodes of collective self-interest forming. Active intolerance of criminality and exploitation.

The concierge is here to help make sure that can never get started.

The reality is two factions, maybe more, with murky outlines and unwritten rules. One seems more terrible. Atavistic destruction for its own sake, better to rule in hell, and so forth. But the other was cool with it until the jump to China was blocked. Now they’re trying retro-autarky but with no strategic vision because it wasn’t supposed to happen. Ahrimanic evil makes for a better neighbor than Sorathic. But neither have a problem with trafficked kids.

The screens can say all kinds of terrible things about the actors. It’s in the screenplay. But the one thing the House cannot tolerate is showing an open door.

Howard David Johnson, Saint Peter Freed from Prison, 2024, mixed media

1. Neither profiteering nor lying and raving on Truth social ever comes up.