6/29/16 Office Investigation

Great stuff.

10 bucks says the lawyer I found was production legal on one of those producers movies.

so did you mention the tension experience or only the OOA. just a technicality, but I wonder if that would have made a difference

I love the way this was put together. Thanks

Wait a second this sounds so familiar. Remember “The Game”, I think the Consumer Recreation Service company owned the whole building and moved from floor to floor. Haha that would be awesome.

Hey @nosnevets this is me totally talking off stage here but isn’t this potentially breaking fourth wall? What information are you trying to gain from this?

• This reply was modified 8 years, 5 months ago by  Melissa.

I really think this the wrong way to play the game. Please don’t harass people at out-of-game locations.
The address is in the email signature because Tension LLC is a hugely expensive business and their lawyer will have told them that was a necessary inclusion.

@nosnevets – Your address was posted here the other day, what if people turned up and snooped around when you weren’t there, thinking it must be a clue?

In other words… Y’all doin too damn much. 😂

@nosnevets Are you still believing the number many of us, including myself, received calls from (424-345-0716) is Sony Pictures?? If so, don’t you recall you had reverse searched the wrong number to get that result?

When I search for 424-345-0716 it is a listing from Commerce CA, as are 0714, 0715, 0717, 0719. Then if you look at 0718 it’s listed as DirecTV. 0713 is a private woman’s number. Nothing about this sequence of numbers suggests to me that 424-345-0716 or the surrounding numbers are related to Sony Pictures of Culver City CA.

@nosnevets I can’t stop you from investigating but at the same time I really don’t want to see you potentially getting into a lot of trouble here for something that seems to me out-of-game.

Put a blanket over a dog. Spin it around and take it to an open yard. Take the blanket off. What’s it going to do? Shake its head, look around, and explore the boundaries. This is not just human nature, it’s hardcore life-wiring. We, as GK IV has opined in the past, are like dogs to the powers that be, and as such we sometimes shit the rug.

I’ve shit the rug before, and I may have done it again, and that’s just how life goes. Desu desu.

Here’s the super-secret behind-the-scenes meta-out-of-game backstory:

As I posted previously, back in March @monkeymuffin333 and I investigated this location because we literally had no idea what was going on, and it was the only actual place in the physical world associated with this mysterious organization. We did not encounter anyone at the office because it was closed. It was a dead-end, but a hanging chad in the back of our minds, one that may bear out later.

@nosnevets and I were talking about it, and I mentioned how weird it was that the day I posted it, Tension sent an email, at the bottom of which was the same address. I mentioned that now I had some free time during business hours, and we thought it would be a jaunty little adventure to see what the inside of the office looked like and just inquire as to whether this company even would acknowledge the existence of the OOA.

It was, one could say, a social experiment. Let us decontextualize the action in the tradition of Russian Formalist literary criticism (I’m beginning to suspect that this narrative has epic and historical themes, after all): Two people walk into a random office in Beverly Hills and inquire about an organization in the hopes of leaving a meager gift of four white roses (cut and trimmed in a square, glass vase, valued at twenty U.S. dollars when purchased through Ace of Vase Flowers of Burbank, CA). They are informed that the office has cut ties with this organization. They leave the gift there and depart.

From the perspective of [redacted] Accounting Agency, it was a strange occurrence, to be sure. Perhaps it has happened before. Perhaps there’s some terrible thing we don’t know that we accidentally reminded them of. Perhaps they’re covering up a kidnapping and worried about being found out. Perhaps they’re really sick of some freaky ARG organizers having to use their address because tax laws require it, and someone got a phone call asking about the weirdos leaving flowers.

We don’t know. Arf arf arf.

My apologies to anyone who was adversely affected by this.

It will not happen again.

Just catching up after a crazy week, this thing caught my eye. The following is going to be wholly out-of-game speculation based on my own production experiences with for-profit entertainment and event coordination, and mods please remove if it’s going too far behind the curtain here..

But here’s what I’m picking up from what you’re putting down, and tell me if I’m mistaken – you went to the mailing address at the bottom of the Tension Experience mailer sent via a Mailchimp managed mailing list??? The one they use to send generally out of game marketing emails to those interested in what Tension is, and haven’t really used since the experience launched??? The address put on the bottom of their Mailchimp email blast due to legal requirements and anti spam laws???

The office you visited was Bogart Business Management… which is a Business Management/Accounting firm, a business comprised of accountants and business affairs managers, based on a LinkedIn search on the business name. They’d be handling the books for Tension, LLC. and likely many other businesses, entertainment or otherwise. When they need to get location permits for events, when they need to pay their actors, when they need to pay their vendors, when they pull stock photography for their newsletters, when they have to take out insurance on events (especially events requiring waivers to be signed and stunts preformed), their security, their web hosting, literally any money changing hands, these people are the ones tracking that and likely executing payment. Their address was on the bottom of the Mailchimp-served-newsletter because that’s their legal physical mailing address, the address that Mailchimp is billing to, the address that Mailchimp keeps on record in case anyone goes back to Mailchimp and complains about spam.

When Tension, LLC wants to do ANYTHING, they have to worry about legal requirements including permits that need to be in place for an in-person event, or when they need to confirm wording on marketing messages that need to go out especially when using images, audio recordings, or written word of participants.. these people are likely involved in making sure everything is paid for, low risk, and allowable by law.

Now… When you have three people who don’t know what they’re getting into show up at a business management firm without an appointment, you’re going to do whatever it takes to make sure they’re cool and they leave quickly and quietly. I’m sure they have only been in that space for a few years, so when you mentioned another business they deflected in an attempt to get y’all on your way..

Like, imagine walking into Conde Nast’s offices and asking them for more information about an app that was talked about in an issue of Wired from a few months back.. they’d likely have a similar reaction and tell you anything you’d want to hear in order to make you leave.

Yes.. you did some research here and found a physical address… but honestly it would’ve been a great idea to think about how you got the address and look into what the business actually did before you paid them a visit.

…message received.

I must have lost my head.

You know, I would have done the same thing @prufrock5150, @nosnevets, and @monkeymuffin333. I would have checked out the address. But what everyone is saying makes a lot of sense. I will remember this for the future. Thanks for the clarity @addisonborn and everyone else. This was an interesting discussion.