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.
That’s immaterial to it being a red flag when they do.
And women wearing smart glasses is immaterial to this article and this discussion about men doing so on dates.
But what if men recorded dates without smart glasses?
It also seems odd to single out the behavior with only this one kind of device.
That is also creepy and people would definitely talk about it if there was an observable trend of men recording dates on their smartphones and uploading those images.
There have been a lot of conversations about these smart glasses over the past year or so. We have been talking exclusively about this kind of device and what it means for privacy for a hot minute now.
Using smart phones isn’t a problem because it’s obvious and easy to decline when someone tries. The article itself points that out. But people can put hidden cameras anywhere.
What are you trying to argue here? That when people use hidden cameras it’s not as scandalous or something?
It is creepy to record someone without their consent. These smart glasses have made it even easier to do so.
I’m arguing that is what the title implies.
A better title would be as you said “It is creepy to record someone without their consent.”
But it is men that are doing this in much larger numbers than anyone else. So the focus of the article is on the type of men who use these glasses while on dates.
Seemed like the focus was on women catching them.