They met at a bar in midtown Manhattan. He arrived wearing a baseball cap pulled low and sported a pair of black-framed glasses, she says. As conversation flowed, from discussions about navigating life in New York to past relationships, he mentioned that his glasses were Meta Ray-Bans.
“I wasn’t familiar with them,” McAnuff, a 28-year-old project manager who now lives in Toronto, tells WIRED. It was her first time seeing the smart glasses up close, which can record images and video from the wearer’s viewpoint. He let her try them on and even showed her a couple of videos that he’d taken previously, she says. “That was it. We stopped talking about it after that. I figured that was the end of the use.”
The next day, checking her Instagram, McAnuff noticed she’d been tagged in one of his story posts. To her surprise, it was footage of them at the bar and on the subway together, en route to a basketball game uptown. In the video, McAnuff is captured from an above angle, sitting across from her date who is holding a drinking glass; WIRED has seen screenshots of the footage. “I felt super violated,” McAnuff says. “Like, what if I don’t want everyone knowing what I’m up to? He felt so free to film me and post it. There was no conversation about it.”
Meta sold more than 7 million pairs of the Ray-Bans in 2025, as its smart glasses have infiltrated public spaces thanks to pranksters with dreams of viral fame, some of whom even film people while they’re at work. The phenomenon, which has also spread to pickup artists hitting on women, has earned the hardware the nickname “creep glasses.”
Among singles, and particularly women, Meta’s AI-powered eyewear has become a recurring nuisance, as people share a spreading unease about being covertly filmed on dates.
Its times like this I'm glad I got frameless glasses
I've read this story about it where the people who bought them stopped wearing them within a few weeks because they felt uncomfortable wearing them - common theme was, when people notice you were those glasses they shun you and find an excuse to end the conversation. Guess people in general agree with you.
*people wearing creep glasses is a red flag
Given that you're operating on anecdotal evidence, the onus would be on you to prove that the effect is exclusively gender linked.
I quite frankly wouldn't be surprised if men are more of a problem with them than women or non binary folk, but as-is the headline is needlessly and intentionally divisive,and does not support that conclusion. Hell, I would argue that the majority of what most people post on social media is creepy, men and women included. It's weird to share non consensual images of people publicly, regardless of how insta rotted your brain is.
We should all always be trying to use people first language unless there's a really specific reason not to, and in this case the point is that people being creepy wear creep glasses, there's no reason to bring gender into it, the reader can draw their own conclusions based on what they know about creepy people.
I can think of countless cases of women sharing stuff on social media that they shouldn't.
The point is that creeps wear creep glasses.
Just because the author is being needlessly divisive for clicks doesn't mean you need to continue that chain.
I thought the convention was to call them "perv glasses"?
Pervvision
I am sure they go well with those apps that generate naked versions of people. Surely they exist for video as well.
Narrator: It doesn't work.
I know, right? Why won't anyone think of the poor techbros!
Right. With prescription lenses the perv glasses are north of $500. If you need to perv and you can't afford another pair, then you just need to wear the perv glasses all the time.
Where is the "hue hue people have cameras in their phone and you have no problem with that, checkmate" guy...I know you're in here.
The Instagram part of the story perfectly highlights the difference. Busting out a camera to start filming the entire date so I can make a highlight reel later is way more conspicuous than simply wearing my glasses. One leads to a discussion while the other is inconspicuous and likely never had consent in the first place.
This is the only sane take on perv glasses.
If someone pulled out their phone to photograph me on our first date, I'd nip that in the bud, and maybe just walk away. I guess I might be okay if there was a scenic background and they said "want to get a selfie together?" but a photo just of me across the table? Creepy.
And with a conversation about it all that can be laid out and consented to.
Hey this view is really pretty can we take a selfie? Sure!
Later that evening: Hey that photo came out good, do you mind if I post it to my Instagram? I'd prefer if you didn't.
Okay no problem.
It doesn't need to be any more complicated than this.
hue hue people have cameras in their phone and you have no problem with that, checkmate /s
Anyone wearing these anywhere is a huge red flag.
7 million? People actually bought this?
Jeez there's a lot of perverts in the world
Just for pervs who want to hang outside the playground on the weekend, huh
77 million MAGA, so 1 in 10, it would be higher, but most are too poor to buy these because of Joe Biden.
Pervert glasses.
They’re called pervert glasses.
Get it right, Wired.
And let’s also lay it all out: the only people wearing them are sick enough in the head to need immediate institutionalization. Full stop, end of story.
My Meta Glasses memeable thought of the day:
If you feel violated when a private citizen follows you around with a camera, might want to also feel violated when the state follows you around with millions of cameras.
Right. Flock, et al. are a violation of our 4th Amendment rights. These “autonomous deputies” are annotating our movements and our private vehicles.
I'm old enough to remember when Google came out with their version. People went appoleptic and cried invasion of privacy. What happened, why were these not shunned in the same way? It's our because they just look like sun glasses? The only acceptable use for these is to aide blind people
I am curious too
Velma Idk what it is about your post but they seem to make the misogynists crawl out of the network. Always multiple people telling on themselves in the comments. Not every post with "Men" in the title needs someone saying "b-but women!"
I think some people have decided Velma's username is "the place to settle the gender wars". They make a lot of posts and are pretty famous. I wouldn't be surprised if they have stalkers who follow every post, or at least the same people repeating the same opinions in different flavours. Usually some variation of "gender problems don't exist" denial.
The key is buying a pair of regular glasses that look similar enough, and put some logo stickers on to fake it. Then, you don't support evil, and you still don't have to talk to people. Win win!
I would advise against this. The time is coming where people wearing perv glasses are going to be encountering bats to the face. BTW, I also know of a couple of people working on adversarial QR codes to attack the glasses' systems.
I know nothing of their capabilities besides the ability to record video. Do these perv glasses really parse and execute QR codes? Seems dumb if so, but I don’t know the intended use case
Just start talking to yourself like you're on Bluetooth. "Hold on, this person is trying to talk to me, one sec"
I actually think these kind of technology have potential great use.
Eg. Real time translation with subtitles / vocie to text translation. It will be great when you travel to othet counties and talk to the locals.
Or like....
Real time navigation from GPS
Calories control etc.
I think this technology is great, but people just gonna abuse it
I wonder what's gonna happen when someone who has like a reactionary-style mental illness, yet is cognitively aware enough to know what the glasses are and keeps up with current events, sees someone with the glasses on and just punches the person in the face. 🤣.
I am just thinking that people will definitely make porns with those glasses
Yup, run the feeds through GenAI and bam, a fascsimile in compromising positions.
Interesting......
I was actually thinking in a more traditional way, you know.....just doing it while wearing the glass and record it.
But yeah....your way seems work better. Sigh, my mind is start lagging behind the AI world I guess.
These people would actually have to be able to get laid for the first plan to work
I know. lol
Technology really evolved...... Some people of my age are laughing on their parents that they don't know computers stuff.
When my daughter grown up, I think she will laughing at me about I don't know shit about AI or whatever that will come out at her era lol
You asked if you were a creep for wearing the smart glasses, so I asked if you're recording people without their consent. I think that's the line. It is creepy to record people without them knowing.
Recording your drive or your bike route is akin to dash cam videos. Not quite the same as recording a person you're sitting across from at a table.
Do you only use those glasses as dash cam replacements?
You are literally a walking security cam. Yes, its creepy dude.
Ye bro ignore everything in my comment sweet, do you feel the same about dash cams? And like for real, I don't have social media and the glasses aren't linked to an app, how in the fucking world am I a security camera?
I 100% feel the same way about dashcams, doorbell cams, trail cams, literally anything that isn't a locally hosted camera.
If you think you aren't recording and submitting ANYWAYs without the link, think again. Look at the lastest investigations into smart TVs.
Just to reiterate, the glasses are absolutely capable of transmitting the video feeds anyways without you ever logging into the app or backing up photos. Meta has a gigantic financial incentive to do so, as it gives them free fresh training data for multiple AI use-cases, and marketing data on you and others.
Can you guarantee that they aren't doing that? Because if not, it seems justified for other people who don't feel comfortable taking that risk not to be forced into taking it by you wearing the glasses. At the very least, you ARE forcing people into taking that risk without their permission.
Very naive to assume they don't just send video and images to Meta without your consent in the light of the recent LG debacle and Meta's general history of secretly doing illegal things with user data
It is but it isn't women doing it generally
Yeah but men have an overwhelming habit of trying to take candid photos of women without thier knowledge. Worked in customer service all my life men are fucking psychos in public.
Is no one allowed to talk about men doing something without making sure everyone knows women are bad, too? Does every study that focuses on something that is prevalent with men must also include every other gender so that men don't feel singled out? Does every article that is written about men have to have a disclaimer that people of other genders might do it, too?
The title and the article are talking specifically about "Men who wear smart glasses on dates". If you are not a man who does that, why did you take such offense to the title?
I didn't take any offence to it.
I just thought it strange to say it's bad when men do a thing with this specific thing, instead of saying it's bad to do the thing at all.
Think if it was flipped around An article said it's bad for women to eat cereals for breakfast, because cereal turns people into murderers. Would that not seem strange to single out women about?
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@lemmy.ml
A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
Some Rules
- Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
- Don't promote proprietary software
- Try to keep things on topic
- If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
- Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
- Be nice :)
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much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
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Men Wearing Meta Glasses on Dates Is an Instant Red Flag
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