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[McGregor]

They definitely refer to it as The Operator in at least one of those interview parts on the THAC channel.

[Black Sand]

I'm sticking to the fact that they don't refer to it straight out of fear; They are paranoid enough to assume that mentioning it brings bad vibes, so yeah, or for OOG reasons they don't want to make it seem cheesy or something.

[Grumplestiltskin]

 Warning: Wall o' text and screen caps ahead

[Lytrigian]

I think there are a few reasons why they don't mention TO:

1) They have trouble remembering him. There are relatively few instances where someone sees TO in the "present day". Most often we have seen him in tapes that cover some time of which Jay, at least, has no conscious memory. (All of Season 2, for example.) They must be aware they're dealing with an eldritch horror of some kind, but mostly they've seen him secondhand. It's probably hard to accept that they've dealt with him so much more often than they recall.

2) They probably have no in-universe name to call him by. "Operator" appeared in season 1 on some of Alex scribbled pages (Edit: as in Grumplestiltskin's post right above this one) and TTA has alluded to that name for him, but for Jay and Tim that label may not be known. Jay has talked about "that thing" once or twice.

3) Might be afraid to mention him. Such things can sometimes be summoned merely by talking about them. If you're smart, you talk about them as little as possible. This is an old, old superstition, and it applies to many things. My grandparents would never talk about the disease cancer by name, for instance.

[ToTheTapes]

[Ztakk]

I would say unless we here something from Troy and Co that blatantly says "Yes, SLenderman's name in Marble Hornets is 'The Operator'" then I'd say that it's just the fan name from Alex's Drawings and the TTA video. A few of you keep saying that they've called him The Operator in interviews, yeah interviews that happened AFTER people started calling him that you're acting like there's never been a case of creators using a fan name to refer to a character in the series.

[Kraehtot]

Re: Warning: Wall o' text and screen caps ahead

[Grumplestiltskin]

Re: Warning: Wall o' text and screen caps ahead

[Lithp]

[Malckeor]

On the subject of the Operator's name...(OOG):

[Kraehtot]

Re: Warning: Wall o' text and screen caps ahead

[Lithp]

Yes, that is the case, which is what I'm trying to prove. And if I might be so forward, it strikes me as a little ridiculous that I have to prove it, because the fanbase coming up with the mouthful of a nickname "The Operator," & Trosephim adopting it, in spite of using the term for something else, in spite of "Slenderman" & "Slendy" being much easier to say & more widely known, & then the "nickname" of "The Operator" somehow falling out of favor to the point where people are surprised to learn that it even has a name other than Slenderman...

That is all just so incredibly improbable.

[Grumplestiltskin]

 Oh, FFS, it's another freakin' Wall of Text

[paladin181]

Wow. I wasn't intending to spark off a huge discussion. it was merely a thought that maybe the name didn't mean what we thought. It is entirely likely that the name means exactly what we thought. I was just posting an alternative mode of thought, not trying to get Grumple and people up in arms. For the record, you did way more work than was necessary to convince me of something I didn't really need convincing of.

[onetruepurple]

It was obvious way back, when this interview very clearly replaced all mentions of "Slenderman" from the fan questions with "Operator".