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[Jsor]

I think it comes off as more realistic that they don't name it in-series. Naming things is really only useful if you're really analyzing it all the time. For the most part, Jay has been solo. Think about it, with Jessica he really had no impetus to talk about The Operator, and pretty much immediately when he did, she disappears. Whenever Alex was around it was 90% action, arguing, or listening to Alex tell scary stories/boss him around. When he encountered Tim, he was trying not to drag him into it. Now that they're together they may start talking about it more -- but this is really the first time that Jay has had a chance to just sit down and talk about the shit that's been going down with someone.

You may ask why he didn't name it for the sake of the viewers, but really, we see what he sees. It's kind of obvious that any references to "that thing" is referring to The Operator, no real need to say anything else. Jay has two choices: explicitly say "I call him The Operator" (in which case they have to come up with some damn good reason why, or Jay sounds like a 10-year-old making up silly names), or refer to him as "The Operator" apropos of nothing in which case viewers go "wait, what? Why?" in which case go back to point 1 -- they'd have to explain the name.

As for why they don't reference him much in general -- I mean, all the questions are obvious. Let's face it, we know nothing about The Operator and we likely can't communicate with it. Asking "who" or "what" or "why" doesn't get us anywhere. At least TTA, Hoody, Alex, and Tim/Masky are real, legitimate people who we can follow around, and in some cases communicate with. They all seem to be connected to TO so asking questions and talking about them is much more useful.

I mean, think about it, what are they going to say about TO? "Golly gosh I sure wonder how he can appear out of thin air in Alex's room and teleport people to random places." Any question they can ask is obvious and The Operator's abilities, and even his apparent thoughts and motivations, are so strange and unknowable that the only possible answer is "fuck if I know". Metagame-wise, it wouldn't contribute anything to the story, and at worst risks telling and not showing, in-game wise talking about it contributes nothing. At least with Alex and Hoody they can speculate about what their motivations and plans are since they're people.

[Sha Noran]

Because they don't yet realize that he is operating Alex and, once in a while, the others... As a man might operate a tool. They don't know yet IG, so even though the writers know this and call him thus, they haven't revealed it yet so the characters in game don't know what to call him, what he's doing, why or how he's doing it.... Nothing to discuss, especially on camera, as they post these online on the channel IG and wouldn't want Alex or TTA to know if they suddenly figured out something critical. They would edit it out if they did. They need the upper hand, and MH is not very interactive; thus, informing us as the audiance does little to no good compared to the bad it could do them if Alex/TTA knew the same information.

[paladin181]

Eh. Jay saw the tapes and can draw the same inferences we can. Alex's picture with "the operator" symbol and the word Operator written under it, and many references by TTA. It wouldn't be a huge leap of logic for him to refer to it as the operator, and Tim asks what do you mean, then Jay has a brief explanation that that's what he thinks is is because of those references.

[Lithp]

I don't know if that's what he "should" do, but it's worth noting that it's not outside of the believability of some of his other leaps in logic, like "ToTheArk is multiple people because the videos look different lol."