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.
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 linked an article that has a focus on men using these glasses on dates. I didn’t come up with the article title myself.
Do you have any stories of women abusing these glasses?
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.
Do you have stories of women or non-binary people abusing these glasses?
I’m sincerely asking.
I think remember reading one about a South Korean lady wearing them on dates and feeding the footage into Claude to analyze and improve her dating skills.
That’s interesting! The article goes into some men using the glasses for the same thing:
I can see the benefits of that approach as long as the person being recorded is aware of what they’re being used for.
I have no stories of anyone abusing these glasses other than the small handful of anecdotes in the article that can fit on one hand.
And as the article points out, 7M of these glasses were sold, so 2-3 stories is not exactly statistically significant or relevant.
I can find you numerous stories of female stalkers and creeps using cellphones though, if that is would help.
This is far from the first article I’ve seen covering these glasses. Many of them are posted to this community.
I’d honestly be interested to see if women and non-binary people are similarly abusing privacy issues with these glasses and in what circumstances. I haven’t seen it reported.
Also, the article headline is that ‘men wearing smart glasses on dates is a red flag’…
Regardless of the stats of who is being creepy currently, the headline is still wrong and needlessly gendered as anyone who wears them on a date is a red flag.
Talking about men who wear smart glasses on dates doesn’t mean that everyone else who wears smart glasses is innocent.
:/
Come on now. My point is that the headline is needlessly divisive.
Do you really think that distinction changes that?
No, the topic is the smart glasses and their use to intrude on other’s privacy.
So new smart technology with cameras come out, people across the gender spectrum use them to be creeps (smartphones).
Now new smart technology with cameras come out (smart glasses), and you think the more valid evidence to look at is a handful of anecdotal stories, rather than applying similar statistics from the previous technology?
You’re conflating me with the author of the article.
“Men that wear smart glasses” is not the same as “Men” to be clear. People who wear smart glasses with the intention of recording others without their consent is the topic here.
I haven’t seen any articles or stories about women or non-binary people abusing smart glasses and I’m curious to read more if there are stories out there on that topic.
Are you implying that no women or non-binary people have at any point abused smart glasses? That’d be a statistically impossibilty considering at least 7 million creep glasses have been sold.
If not, and you agree that there has at some point been women or non-binary people abusing the glasses, simply through sheer statistics, then the headline is needlessly gendered.
whatabout