The public blowback to Meta’s contentious smart glasses continues to grow.
The popular camera-equipped accessories, which have earned the pejorative nickname of “pervert glasses,” are systematically being abused by men to harass women in public .
It’s become such a contentious issue that a German nonprofit filed a criminal complaint over privacy concerns. Just this week, England and Wales banned the glasses from courts.
In a particularly egregious example of the kind of harassment the glasses are enabling, a user who goes by Mark filmed himself accosting British comedian Diane Morgan, widely known as the fictional documentarian Philomena Cunk, during a TV shoot on Hollywood’s iconic Walk of Fame.
“Excuse me, can I get your phone number,” Mark asks a taken-aback Morgan in a video titled “rizzing on cunk,” which was originally uploaded to TikTok in May and which has since accumulated over one million views. His Instagram account appears to have been taken down.
“I saw the cameras on you,” Mark says, adding that he “thought you were gorgeous.”
As soon as a crew member politely asked if they could “get some space,” the glasses wearer exploded in a fit of rage.
“Don’t f***ing touch me or we’re gonna have a problem, OK?” he retorted.
“We’re working, we’re in the middle of a shot,” another clearly exasperated crew member told him. “This is what we all do for a living.”
While the glasses wearer ends up agreeing to step out of the frame, the horrid interaction perfectly illustrates why Meta is dealing with a major PR crisis. The company has been trying to crack down on sleazy pickup artists who approach women and make sexual or degrading comments. But considering how many of these accounts continue to fall through the cracks, the company is clearly struggling.
Besides, many of the offending videos can easily live on on other sites Meta has no control over, like TikTok. A separate video showing the same harasser accosting a group of women was shared on YouTube as well.
Netizens were particularly appalled at the video of him harassing Morgan.
“I do not know how you film that video, watch it back, decide ‘This is how I want to present myself to a globally connected population,’ and post it,” one Bluesky user wrote.
“omg I would’ve punched him in the face,” another user added. “Those guys were probably itching to do that and he was probably hoping they would, so he could put it on TikTok or something.”
A brief perusal of Mark’s TikTok account reveals other horrifying interactions on the streets of LA, from accosting unhoused people to accusing a driver of hitting him and making him beg on his knees for forgiveness.
It’s exactly the kind of atrocious behavior you’d expect from those desperate enough to get viral views on social media via ragebaiting content expressly intended to trigger a strong reaction. Meta’s glasses serve as the perfect recording device for the heated exchanges, leaving unsuspecting members unaware they’re even being filmed.
Mark appears to have garnered a reputation of walking onto film sets.
“Let’s talk about how you were told to move from the set, you don’t own the streets, you didn’t pay for the set they worked on,” one LA-based influencer wrote in an Instagram video, which appears to show security guards escorting him down the street. “You continued to walk through the set, then was told to leave again! Then you asked security officers for 100$ to leave, then made it very clear that you had white privilege.”
More on the glasses: Meta’s Attempted Crackdown on AI Glasses Perverts Is Already Failing
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