randomly got annoyed again today at fandom portrayals of elias as a luddite. you think the world’s most powerful avatar of beholding would be…. behind the times? ignorant to the progress of technology? even if you choose to ignore the fact that the digital age revolutionized beholding as a dread power (going from something tied much more closely to the hunt to something so much more exestential and all-consuming… the surveilance state! online surveilance! wiretapping! data gathering! predatory privacy policies! the zoom boom! etc!!!) and that the evolution of recording technology is how the institute was able to function as efficiently as it did to tell us its story… why would it ever make sense to you that the world’s most powerful beholding avatar would remain wilfully ignorant of… anything. let alone wilfully ignorant of how the vast majority of the world functions and communicates. plus his greatest fear is death!! you think he isn’t up to date on all the most prominent medical advances? that’s just a willful misreading of the text.
You’re so right. I have exactly one justification for “Elias doesn’t know technology,” and it is that the Eye canonically breaks modern things. Cameras don’t work, computers don’t record, everything has to be at least slightly outdated. It makes the whole thing vibe as if he actually physically can’t know about memes lol
hello @judgment-and-knowledge ! you are correct that Beholding corrupts certain recording devices (famously, a camera) however:
the Real Statements not being able to be recorded on a laptop and needing to be recorded on tape are less of a function of Beholding, and more a function of The Web
2. Elias is 100% in control of what the Institute’s CCTV does or does not capture, and the footage gets amended/corrupted at his discretion
so it’s not that Elias is incapable of using CCTV, it’s quite the opposite. Elias controls what people can and cannot See when it happens inside of HIS Institute
he is fully in control of/perfectly aware of what recording devices exist inside the Institute and he is in total control of them
