Can someone explain why this isn’t actually a solution to an old problem? We used to have issues with various forms of harassment that were not addressed because they relied on unreliable testimony. Now we actually have people creating hard evidence of their actions.
The behaviors described in this article are banned in every school I or my children have ever attended. How difficult would it be for the parents of any of these victims to hire a lawyer to absolutely wipe the floor with these people? Don’t these videos basically put the perpetrators heads on silver platters?
“Hey everyone, this asshole is wearing smart glasses and recording us all. Question is: are they going to remove them right now, or are we?”
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ch.pocketpc.nearbyglasses
I love how the only meaningful outrage over these are the impact to women. Everyone else is basically worthless to our cultural value system.
I mean, why do you think they are targeting women in the first place?
Yeah no shit letting people go around with concealed recording equipment is resulting in problems. Especially in a fucking school!
these boys need their mother’s to whoop their asses and their dads to whip them into shape.
“oh boys will be boys”
no. boys will be whatever you let them be, and if you let them be perverted pieces of shit they grow up to be perverted pieces of shit.
their mother’s what?
this is going to be a bad ADA issue
I guarantee most of these schools protect the bullies and punish the victims. Like if a girl being harassed broke the glasses, she would get expelled. The world is the way it is because people enable and worship bullies across the board.
Schools don’t care about bullying or sexual harassment as long as it doesn’t look bad on them. If it can be swept under the rug, they will ignore it.
At least that is my experience from schools in the UK.
Same in the US
This. My friend in HS went to guidance multiple times to complain about being bullied by another classmate. After the 2nd or 3rd time requesting thy switch his class, they decided to resolve the issue by forcing them to be partners for an assignment in class. He complained again, and was told to deal with it. One day my friend finally cracked and broke the bully’s nose because he had enough and clearly the school was only willing to make this worse, so they called the police on my friend. It’s pretty insane how some things get dealt with sometimes.
I wish they called the police when I stood up for myself. It was sexual harassment/assault but I didn’t know that at the time, I just knew I didn’t like it so used violence. He stopped and ran off bleeding all over the place.
Totally valid self defence from a legal perspective. But they only used the threat of calling the police and I was absolutely terrified so just shut down.
Countless stories like this :(
In a different video, the same boy films another upset girl approaching him with a metal stool in her hands. An adult intervenes before anyone is hurt.
Exactly, they always protect the bullies.
this article is stupid for another reason: go on youtube and look up camcorder footage of public high schools in the 90s.
absolutely NOBODY is anxious about getting filmed, and nobody has bad intentions, and nobody would write an article about it.
maybe things ARE worse but maybe the situation is more complex than meta glasses.
In the 90s we didn’t have kids recording things for clout and follows. Kids with camcorders were the alt or nerd crowd doing it for themselves or at most local cable access.
Plus a camcorder isn’t really a covert recording device.
In the 90s, camcorders were a relative novelty and nobody had any reason to be anxious about being filmed because there was no way to easily share video with millions of strange people maliciously for clout. If you were caught doing something funny, you might appear on TV after signing a release. (e.g. America’s Funniest Home Videos) Sharing video on the internet was a practical technical impossibility, and people had mostly private lives. You’re right it’s not really the glasses, it’s the internet and social media. I wouldn’t be surprised if the first person POV provided by glasses makes content like that more compelling, though, and thus more common.
People covertly filmed for malicious reasons even back then of course, but it was not generally made available to the masses.
If I have a point, it’s that I don’t think this is evidence that we’re more fucked up now than we were then, just that technology has enabled new kinds of abuse that were inconceivable back then.
Yeah, our society is fucked, that’s what
People are being disgusting, using technology that was designed to be stealthy on purpose by others for disgusting reasons (to normalize allowing ever greater data collection by tech companies - no surprise the privacy protections are trivially easy to defeat), and are posting videos online for a reason - that they get satisfaction from it.
I guess I don’t care if this makes me sound old or callous, but we need to bully these people. Make the people who post and share these videos embarrassed. Tell them they look like stupid losers who can’t get dates or talk to people. Make them feel bad for not being kind and socially connecting with others. Give them no community or understanding until they stop breaking the social contract.
the only 3 usecases for these are:
Assholes
Perverts
Blind people - sucks for them, because the first two are going to ruin it before it benefits anyone with disabilities
Yeah recording ICE activities might be another valid one
Though that could be done with another type of concealed camera I guess
so I’ve given that one some thought and came away with this: if ice / pd detains you, they’re going to take your recording devices. I need my glasses to see enough to walk around.
also, even more gross: they know what to look for, because until recently, ICE was using these devices. That’s been banned, but probably only because they’re making their own.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/ice-banned-meta-glasses-now-154840012.html
Oh look, they’d know and I’ll be honest, I saw someone else post that on here in another thread, liked their point and I’ve given it no thought other than looking like an observer, not recording. And, I’ll add, I’m not in the US so I don’t have local knowledge.
I’d support their use case for it though.
What social contract? The kids wearing these can’t value something they’ve never known.
I think young men don’t know how to flirt anymore. I think many of them think they are flirting in some weird way but they have no clue that they are actually bothering/pestering/harassing these woman. I mean I know too many young men that don’t have licences, don’t know how to use a lawn mower, can’t ride a bike, completely useless men…just can’t do anything besides go to school play video games and not much else.
I do blame technology. Keep your kids off online gaming imo. Bust out the old games or only let them play offline games on a console or PC. Especially no cell phone games. Cut YouTube to practically nothing. Get them outside…
This has nothing to do with flirting. They harass girls to feel in control and take out their dating frustration on someone else
I think about the issues with modern dating often, flirting included. One of my perspectives is dating culture is an extension of social culture which is an extension of communal culture, and unfortunately communal culture is dying in America. From something as common as college kids getting educated out of state then starting their career at a 3rd location, to something more systemic like the formation of the rust belt, local communities have been eroding.
Without an established generational history of people talking, connecting, enjoying each other, flirting, and dating no one can really know the difference between expressing interest and harassment as that difference now depends on what your algorithm says and what your echo chambers reinforce.
In short everyone is playing by a different set of social rules, video games may play a part in this via social isolation, but I think the greater socioeconomic system we’re all bound to is much more culpable.
My landlords raise my rent every year, forcing me to move every year.
Why would I bother to foster a sense of community when the community will throw me out at the nearest convenience for profit?
Exactly, the system we live in undermines communities, this is just another example.
Hoooold up just a minute. How much do these glasses cost? Like hundreds right? What kind of teen boy has that much money to burn? I sure as fuck didn’t, and I worked. Their parents bought them, and these are kids, so it’s 100% blame on the parents here.
Rich kids. The worst type as they’re also the least likely to get meaningfully punished.
$99 I believe Kmart in Australia charges for the Anko ones.
Not sure what they connect to though
Even if the kids bought them it is still the parent’s responsibility to keep their kid from being an obnoxious pervert.
That’s what really sucks about this.
There’s no institutional backlash. (At least not yet. That could change.)
We’re depending on parents who park these little shits in front of screens and expect to be left alone while their kids are radicalized.
The alternative is having the rich parents be responsible for the children they breed and that will never happen so suck it up poors
No different to mobile phones or iPods or PlayStations. Pair of meta raybans are arguably cheaper than those items now due to inflation.
These devices are fundamentally different to those.
I had thousands as a teenager from around 15 years old working part time evening and weekends at barely above minimum wage.
When you have no expenses from living at home, you can save everything (and in my case blow it all on electronics lol)
Ok, middle school then
Parents with more money than sense
When I was 16 and started working, I quickly had enough money saved from working minimum wage, part time, to buy myself a car. It’s not impossible.
Also, these may be kids/young adults, but they should all know right from wrong. Blame is absolutely on the students who use these too.
Here they’re not even allowing students to carry mobile phones inside of schools. How is this even allowed?
Here they’re not even allowing students to carry
Thought for sure you were setting up an “Americans Love Guns” joke.
can journalism please stop digging deep into the cambridge to pull out words like ‘wheedles?’
i’ve been on this earth for almost 50 years, and i’ve read thousands of texts and never seen that word fucking ever.
you should NOT have to look in the dictionary to read pop culture drivel. these dipshits are just trying to justify their privileged educations, and the ironic thing is that none of them can write for shit despite needing a private school/ivy league pedigree to churn out vacuous thinkpieces for teen vogue and futurism (whatever the hell that is).
Your comment is 100% poppycock.
I like reading new words
Why are you so mad about learning a new word? It’s even faster to look their meaning today thanks to the internet.
Guess you never ran across that kids book from the 70s. Apparently it also became a Seattle mascot. Anyway I never thought of it as a fancy word.

In my eyes anyone wearing one of these is a pervert. I simply don’t see who else could be the audience for a purposefully discreet camera built into a pair of glasses. Even Google’s attempt at glasses were more overt that these. I’d say Meta is shameful, but that’s not exactly a shocker to anyone at this point.
Edit: Seen a few suggestions, but my counterpoint to all of them is - you don’t need the camera to discreet fir any of these purposes. You’d only need it to be discreet if you didn’t want people to realise you were filming, which just seems aimed towards perverts in my mind.
I don’t understand how these are fundamentally different from the phone cameras that everyone points at everyone else already. holding a phone up isn’t exactly conspicuous at this point.
schools should probably ban them for the case above, but schools should probably ban phones as well. in the US at least there’s so expectation of privacy anywhere public and smart glasses are a tiny fraction of the doorbell cameras, security cameras, etc that are everywhere
it feels like we’re approaching a circlejerk level of being against smart glasses in general, which do have a ton of interesting use cases that aren’t recording related (but still require a camera for position tracking etc). the “pervert glasses” position is intentionally obtuse
I would have loved glasses that could detect advertising with a camera and block it out so I don’t see it, but instead we got AI nudes and stalking.
Aww man you just made me realise that you could combine A.I. image generation with augmented reality to make everyone nude in real time. What a fucked up world we live in. I’m sure someone is already working on a program like this
Not just nude, but any race, any age, any species. Or, make some or all people disappear from view. Not just people but everything around you will look however you want it to (or can afford to pay someone else to make it so.) Clothes will become simple, disposable leotards with markings that make it easy for AR to overlay any style of “clothes”. We’ll broadcast our selection to the surrounding goggles, and they can either show that, or whatever they want. Of course sound is part of it too, so your Puerto Rican “friend” can look like and sound like Princess Diana to you.
But wait, there’s more. Let’s say you’re walking down a busy street and your boss is out that day too. He’ll be able to spot you from blocks away, and even through buildings, tracking your location and following you until he “happens to bump into you.” A feature reserved for certain “elites” and “officials” in society. Whatever information you have available about the people around you will appear floating around them, like a health bar. You think we have no privacy now, wait till everyone knows the basics about you and can pay to know even more, and have it appear above your head and whispered in their ear.
And probably even more ads sent directly to your eyeballs. If they’re not there yet they’re already on the roadmap.
What matters is who controls the tech, not just the capabilities.
This. Adblock glasses were never going to come from a company that gets a lot of it’s revenue from ads.
Guerilla warfare glasses. Highlights property owned by billionaires.
So much potential. Face lookup of contacts so I get reminded of people’s names. Lyrics to any detected song so I can sing along. Virtual post-it note reminders in 3D space. Alerts or navigation while walking. Virtual monitors put on any surface.
But humans are too hung up on sex, so it’s not going to happen.Face lookup of contacts so I get reminded of people’s names.
Okay, I stop reading here. That’s fucking insane.
what’s wrong with such a fully local application?
Humans are often the root of the probem with technology.
I remember seeing a video of a blind woman using them, in combination with some earbuds, so she could get her surroundings described to her, as well as have objects she picked up described. But you’re right, glasses with discreet cameras on them, aren’t necessary for a situation like that - Something more overt would be fine for that use case.
I would love overt google glass style glasses that are obvious as a solution for a dashcam like system for when i am driving, or tracking where I left mg keys etc. But as you say, the discreet camera is for perverts.
It’s probably the clearest if a built-in camera is not allowed for glasses and the camera is an external unit they have to clip on. Functional the same, but socially making it clear you’re filming.
Even Google’s attempt at glasses were more overt that these.
That’s because the tech wasn’t there yet. Otherwise, it would have been the same.
I kind of like the idea. Take some pictures while doing other things like riding your bike or going on a hike without having to take out your phone. Take a quick picture while shopping to them to my wife. Get navigation cues without the phone. But they are so creepy
I’ve seen videos on Instagram of people using them for a first person view without having to strap a GoPro to their head. Like for hobby work.
But if you’re going biking or whatever, you can just as easily strap a camera to your helmet, and get a 360° view to boot. If you’re hiking or shopping, it’s very little effort to take out your phone and snap a pic. And you get the benefit of being able to actually preview the shot.
The girls need to fight back with photos of them. Watch how fast they put a stop to it.
Make them famous.


























