Over a decade ago, Google showed off a pair of smart spectacles called Google Glass, sparking a major ethical debate over wearables being used to covertly film people without their permission.
At the time, the outrage was enshrined by the derogatory neologism “glasshole,” meaning a Google Glass wearer who was accused of having little regard for the privacy of those around them.
A seeming eternity later, Meta has attempted to revive the idea with its Ray-Ban Meta glasses. While it’s arguably a significant technological leap over Google’s early forays, the debate has seemingly remained the same.
Case in point, as Daily Dot reports, a New York subway rider has accused a woman of breaking his Meta smart glasses.
“She just broke my Meta glasses,” said the TikTok user, who goes by eth8n, in a video that has since garnered millions of views.
Help me find Karen – 77th and lex train stop #karen #fyp #viral assault #subway
“You’re going to be famous on the internet!” he shouted at her through the window after getting off the train. The accused woman, however, peered back at him completely unfazed, as if to say that he had it coming.
“I was making a funny noise people were honestly crying laughing at,” he claimed in the caption of a followup video. “She was the only person annoyed. I never spoke to her, I even let her sit down when she got on the train at 42nd street, and I continued to stand.”
But instead of coming to his support, the internet wholeheartedly rallied behind the alleged perpetrator, celebrating the woman as a folk hero — and perfectly highlighting how the public feels about gadgets like Meta’s smart glasses.
“Good, people are tired of being filmed by strangers,” one user commented.
“The fact that no one else on the train is defending him is telling,” another wrote.
“She’s perfect,” another gushed. “I hope she called him a dork for wearing them before she broke them.”
Others accused the man of fabricating details of the incident.
“‘People were crying laughing’ — I’ve never heard a less plausible NYC subway story,” one user wrote.
While Meta built in a small LED light in the front of its glasses to indicate when it’s recording a video, it can easily be covered by a small piece of tape, making it trivially easy to spy on strangers in public without their knowledge or consent. As Daily Dot points out, people are even selling stickers for this specific purpose.
In the meantime, eth8n claims to have “filed a claim with the police and it’s a misdemeanor charge.”
“What she did was assault, can get arrested for it if I see her again and felt like it,” he wrote.
But it remains to be seen whether the mysterious woman will face any consequences for breaking his glasses — or if the adoring public will even turn her in.
More on Meta’s glasses: Meta’s Disastrous Smart Glasses Demo Even Worse Than We Thought
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