Maybe they could never see the actual pharaoh, but what I'm saying is that "The Pharaoh" was itself the "face" of power, and also where power and influence actually resided. Now we have surveillance and propaganda perpetuated by either known but opaque actors (e.g. governmental agencies, corporations) or simply unknown ones. You can believe or not in an international "elite" conspiracy, but by that I also mean random teen hacker groups, data brokers, gov agencies of nations other than the one you live in, etc.