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There's something very futuristic about the idea of wearable tech generally, but glasses in particular feel like this step towards the Star Trek and real life that we've all been sort of wanting since we were kids. But we are now at the point where the technology around these new devices is getting frighteningly good. Smart glasses today can play music. They can record video in almost 4K resolution. They can make phone calls and all of this without anyone really being able to tell that these are anything other than just a regular pair of glasses. It It's really cool, right? Like this is amazing. We live in the future, right? Yay.
However, there is another side of this technology that makes me sweaty in my armpits. This is sadly just another tool the big tech companies are going to use to record, track, and listen to all the details of our lives. But even worse, it is also a tool to covertly record each other. And we know from history that tech companies don't exactly have the best track record for our personal information. But sadly, I don't think that's going to matter because if those terms and conditions have taught us anything, it's that if the prize is shiny and new enough, we'll sign up for just about anything. [Music]
This video is made possible by the brilliant folks over on Patreon. So, probably the most famous version of smart glasses today are the Meta Ray-B bands. And they've actually just released another partnership with Oakley. And this is without exaggeration a completely new tech category that is already way more popular than I expected. Apparently, the original Meta Ray-B band sold over two million units since its initial launch, which is a ton for basically an entirely new product category. And look, I'm not like a tech reviewer, okay? But I I think I can pretty confidently say that this is going to be a product that you're going to see a lot more often. They even label videos on Instagram that are shot with Meta Ray-B band sunglasses. Like, there's this little bar up at the top, so you know that they're going to be pushing this.
But Meta is not the only one playing in this game, and a bunch of the other giants are hopping on board. Google is rebooting their Google Glass, which we're going to talk about in a second. Alibaba and Xiaomi have their own versions, too. And apparently, Apple is even working on a version of this tech. The market projections for this new category is of course already in the multi-billions. And this is kind of surprising for me because the last attempt for this tech went really bad. People who wore the Google glasses back in the mid 2010s were sometimes referred to as glass holes, which I love. This was a term used to describe the annoying people who would invade other people's privacy through recording them without their consent wearing these kind of funny looking glasses. Let's be honest, they look kind of dumb, but they were also kind of universally hated. Like Google apparently had to develop a manual for early adopters to help them not be creepy or rude. And one guy who used it admitted that he would take them off in the bar or in public bathrooms because it was so awkward. Like these things were culturally stigmatized.
But today, these things are back and you'll notice that they don't look like those earlier versions. These things are sleek now. They're basically undetectable as smart glasses unless you know the subtle differences to look for. The camera notch in the corner, maybe a slightly thicker arm or frame to accommodate some of this new tech. And this is apparently enough to make it a wildly popular product. Like the goofy looking Google glasses from 10 years ago had people shaming tech bros out of business and now the same creepy cameras in our glasses look fresh and and we're buying millions of them. And outside of all the past social stigma, okay, the fact that they're hidden sort of makes it worse, doesn't it? Like the only reason that you would hide these things is to allow those features to be used without being noticed by others. Like if you can record yourself doing literally anything with a GoPro, why does it need to be concealed in your glasses, you know? And would you believe it, people are using these glasses to film other people without them noticing?
There seems to be a new nonchalance about filming strangers nowadays. I found this Tech Radar article where the author uses smart glasses around New York City and he sort of documents the experience and talks about what it was like and decides that it's fine because everyone is used to being filmed nowadays. And I don't know if I'm just like pessimistic and like boomer about this. But but this sentence in particular just rubbed me the wrong way. "Soon everyone will wear a camera on their face everywhere. So what? We're used to it. In fact, smart glasses are going to be more polite because I'll have a shining light that lets you know that I'm recording." See, it's fine because you know that I'm recording you cuz I have this light on the side of my glasses that lets you know that I'm filming this conversation. And I'm like, maybe I don't relate to the author's take on this particular subject, but he's not wrong. Like, yes, there was the social stigma of the previous generation, but remember that was 11 years ago at this point. There's people buying these glasses today who weren't even allowed to have their own phones when the Google Glass originally came out. So, there's been a shift in those 10 years that has made these glasses and the cameras in them more socially acceptable.
So, what happened? The social landscape of the internet in particular from from the smart glasses of 2014 to today is is almost completely different. TikTok didn't exist yet. Instagram was still mostly for seeing what your friends were up to on the weekend. And the iPhone that had just come out had one camera on the back of it. The big video platform at that time was Vine. And I think that that platform was just a hint of where things were going. Vine was the first time where people were just filming casual content on the phones in their pockets and uploading it online. And then TikTok exploded this to a whole other level. But really, I do think that part of the reason why Vine didn't last as long as it potentially could have is that the technology to film and upload parts of your life to the internet wasn't as refined and as seamless as it is today. We are now living in a real world that is constantly being interrupted or documented for the online world. Everyone is on their phones in public. Everyone is filming [ __ ] Everyone's taking pictures of the same sunset to post online. Concert footage is filled with people holding their phones in the air. We don't send our friends texts. We take a picture of whatever we're doing and we send it to them on Snapchat or we post it on our Instagram story. We already film everything. So, the idea of glasses that have cameras and microphones in them is is not really that much more of a leap today, right? These glasses can be seen as just like an easier way to document everything that we're already filming right now. And the result is that people are just filming other people all the time and it's just not a great look.
Friend of the channel, Joe Lee, uh we talked about him in our Matcha episode. He has a viral Matcha Cafe in Vancouver and he has seen the effect of these smart glasses firsthand. He's posted videos of his experiences with people filming staff specifically on these glasses in at least one case and it's happening all over the place as well. Someone came into the cafe recently wearing the like Ray-B band Meta glasses. My barista told me this morning that, hey, there's a video of me online. Do you mind asking them to remove it? I see the video. It's like they're ordering from the barista. There's other baristas, customers in the frame, and you can like fully fully see their faces. I think if you're going to do this type of content, you should be individually blurring out everyone's faces that you don't have permission to film.
Now, we chatted with Joe in a exclusive interview over on Patreon. And today is actually the last day of our Patreon sale. If you saw our last video, we have cut our main Patreon tier in half for one week only, and it's ending on the day that this video is posted. So, if you're seeing this and it's like a week later, sorry, you kind of missed it. But if you're interested and it's the day that we posted it, let me give you a quick pitch. Otherwise, the time stamp for the rest of the video is right here. Patreon is the best way for you to support a channel, especially one like ours, because every dollar that you contribute to us is split three ways between Lou, Matthew, and myself, the people who make this channel possible. We don't use AI in any of our content. We are really trying to run this channel in a way that is ethical and sustainable for us, but still giving value and entertainment to you. You'll also be getting bonus content, access to our Patreon only discord, and a bunch of other bonus stuff that we're talking about there, not on the channel. But if you don't have the time, that's absolutely fine. Let's just hop right back into it.
So, there is a bunch of channels like this one that I'm about to show you where people have conversations with strangers on the street and then they share it online. It's it's an entire category. Now, this guy in particular I I find very interesting. >> Mind would I sit with you, man? I hate there's like multiple He's added like dramatic like hope core kind of music over top of it, but then there's also music playing in the background. It kind of drives me crazy. >> My wife passed away. >> I'm sorry. >> My daughter calls me once in a while. >> Yeah. >> Tell him you're filming. Tell the old man clocks him. >> Who are you anyways? >> What do you mean? >> Well, you just sit down and start asking questions. >> Like in that moment, he goes, "Wait, so who who the [ __ ] are you? Why are you Why are you just randomly sitting down at this table and talking to me? Because I hate to say it, but that's not actually normal human behavior on the street. Like, no one's just randomly going up to people who are sitting by themselves, sitting down with them, and then just like quizzing them about their life. I get it. Like, this is nice. like in some ways, you know, he's he's hanging out with Roger and and this is a harmless conversation because Roger maybe just enjoyed having some time to talk with a young man, but it also feels kind of exploitative at the same time. >> I worked for him engineering when I worked. >> Cool. Did you like it? >> I like retired. >> Did you Yeah. I mean, did you like working for him? >> Oh, yeah. >> Music kind of rubs me the wrong way. The m the music's like telling you what to think about it. like he's trying to make this guy seem sad. >> K-pop Demon Hunters is the most popular movie that Netflix has ever [ __ ] made. Here's my question. Does he do this when the camera's not recording? Like, are you are you going out of your way to meet old dudes who are just lonely by themselves when you're not recording them with your smart glasses? That makes it different. You know, like the this is a interaction that doesn't happen unless you know that there's some kind of social validation from this. This video has 1.3 million likes and the comments are people being like, "Yo, you know what? He really enjoyed the company. Ask him about his his childhood." He probably would have appreciated it more if he wasn't just being reminded that he's dying alone and his kids don't care to see him. Jesus Christ. People don't understand what's going on here. We're so not used to human interactions anymore that we see what looks like an authentic conversation between two people and we go, "Oh, that's so nice." But we forget that it's content, that this is being filmed specifically for content. And then you go back to the rest of his account and it's all videos like this. It's like he goes to restaurants in the middle of the day when only retirees are going to be there and then he just films his interactions with them. >> I'm just doing chicken, cheese, and queso. And that's it. A lot of people clown my order, bro. You think it's stupid? >> You don't think it's stupid? >> Oh, yeah. >> What? I don't understand why this content is is interesting. Wow. We actually see him for the first time. He looks exactly like me. What do you know? Why are we watching this guy eating? This is This is odd now. But this one is is the craziest one of the batch. >> You mind if I join you, sir? >> Yeah, that's all right. Have a good one. >> Sometimes getting rejected can hurt your confidence. If you want to repair that confidence, you got to check out this tool called Patter AI. It's a super simple app. Ask you a bunch of questions and based on your answers, it creates a plan for you. This daily plan and complete exercises it provides. >> He shoots an ad with a dude like his hook for the ad is a random old guy in a restaurant. Like people know his content is him approaching random old dudes in a restaurant and talking to them and then he just like ladders it right into an ad. And people are like, "Hey, thanks for respecting his wishes." It's like, "Yeah, bro. The reason why you never see him get rejected is because he never puts those ones on the internet." Like, all right, if if you're filming an advertisement, you should not be using random people to sell stuff, right? Like, I think that's kind of that should be obvious. Like, if you found out that you were in a Coca-Cola ad somehow and it was being seen on TV by thousands and thousands of people, you would be like, "Hey, where the [ __ ] is my money? >> Look, Gary, there I am again." But because this is filmed to be sort of candid and it's posted on Instagram or TikTok or whatever, it's just not treated in the same way. We don't think of it in the same way. But this also kind of drives me nuts because I know that this guy is targeting older men because he knows that there's a pretty good chance that they're not on TikTok and that they have that they have no idea what he's doing. Like the boomers sitting in this restaurant by themselves probably don't know that we even have smart glasses nowadays. Ah, it makes me uncomfortable.
Now, I did find one reviewer that admitted that an issue with these new glasses is the fact that people know that you're filming them sometimes. He talks about how the glasses can add like an awkward layer to some social interactions, and he even includes a clip where a bartender calls it creepy when he's talking about it. >> Am I recording that? >> That is so >> Yeah, that's cool. No, that's so creepy. No, >> like I mean you would you would know, you know, it's like pretty obvious that I put both on like it could just >> often I sometimes end up just removing them to make people feel more comfortable. >> But I was surprised to see that this part of the conversation around these glasses is largely not mentioned at all within the reviewer space. Like we've all just accepted that filming each other is a part of this new tech reality. people are already filming service workers at restaurants and at food trucks and stuff and that's just going to happen even more now. And listen, at this point you might just be feeling like this is personal preference, right? Like maybe I'm just overly freaked out about this and it's actually not something that you need to worry about. However, there is a very real social cost of this kind of technology that we are only just starting to understand now. So, you may or may not feel uncomfortable with the idea of being filmed by strangers in the street who have discrete cameras and their glasses on their face or whatever, but the reality is that you are probably already being filmed and monitored in more ways than you already know.
You might have noticed that there has been a slow social shift that I've been talking about already. But what we are heading towards and we we are already living in is something called surveillance culture or surveillance capitalism. And these glasses are a huge part of this shift. But there are other products that contribute to this as well that we're going to be talking about in a second. But let's ironically just right off the top get a definition from the AI summary on Google. Surveillance culture describes a society where watching, monitoring, and data collection are pervasive affecting daily life and influencing attitudes, behaviors, and power structures. It involves both topdown surveillance by governments and corporations and bottomup surveillance where people actively participate in monitoring themselves and others through social media, personal devices, and apps. This culture normalizes transparency, shapes our perceptions of privacy and risk, and is often explored in media like novels and films such as Black Mirror. And and of course, the irony there, if you didn't pick up on it, is that Google is constantly scraping and selling your data. But we don't care, right? Like, how many data leaks have we just completely ignored at this point? How many terms and conditions have we not read? How many products do we own today that are quietly harvesting data about our day-to-day life that we don't even think about? And listen, I know, I know, cuz I glaze over the stuff, too. Like, I'm guilty of it. I I don't really care about any of this stuff half the time. I'm just trying to live my life. But the cameras are are just the most blatant step in this. And I feel like we're just going to decide that it's okay, too. And maybe that's fine, but it's a little scary.
Ring doorbells are are another thing. We almost made this video about Ring doorbells, actually, but we decided to pivot to the Ray-B bands because they're kind of more trendy right now. But the doorbell thing on the surface, it's just it's useful and practical, right? You can see who's at your front door. You can receive packages when you're not home or whatever. But this is yet another camera with a connection to a billion-dollar company that already has way too much power. I found an article on Politico that says that there are more than 10 million of these doorbells installed across America right now. This is the same company that's selling you products that are being delivered to your door. And if you don't see the potential issues with that, then I'll just let you sit with it and and we'll come back to it. But I got to tell you another story that happened in this article. They tell a story of how the police were able to seize all of the footage from this individual's 20 ring cameras inside and outside his house without his consent. Didn't even have to ask him. They just went to Amazon who owns the cameras and technically stores all the footage that they gather and they were like, "Hey, can we get all that stuff?" And Amazon was like, "Yeah, give the police all of your stuff." The article is actually fascinating and deeply unsettling. Uh, you should read it if you have the time, but just I want to give you one line to give you an idea of what they're talking about. They amount to a large and unregulated web of eyes on American communities, which can provide law enforcement value information in the event of a crime, but also create a 24/7 recording operation that even the owners of the cameras aren't fully aware they've helped to build. And this is fine as long as you're not in trouble, right? Maybe. However, America is quickly descending into a very problematic militaryin enforced country. And so having all of those cameras conveniently located all over the place in everyone's home that can be extracted and accessed by police at any time may not actually sound like that good of an idea. Maybe if you live in Sweden where like everybody has rights or whatever, that would be great. But I don't know. If you combine this with the dash cams in our cars, the cameras in our phones and now the ones in our glasses, and it's easy to see how suddenly the security that we thought we had with the doorbell camera is actually the opposite. And we're all buying into this technology ourselves. We are voluntarily making the choice to monitor each other with doorbell cameras and smart glasses, etc., etc. But we're also paying for all those things ourselves. And we've made all these decisions because it feels like the right choice, right? I wanted to buy a Ring doorbell for for my house because I did want all the benefits that they can offer. But then I wrote this script and I realized that I I can actually just look through the peepphole in my door if I'm really concerned about who's on the other side. >> Open the door for I am a bogus gas man with fake ID and I'm here to ransack your H. >> There'll be no ransacking a homes today for this peepphole has been your undoing. On your way, Rogue.
Now, interestingly, earlier this year, there was a big scandal where people claimed that their Ring systems had been hacked because it showed unknown users logging into it. Amazon later came out and debunked this claim. But can you blame anyone for being concerned? Because it's not like this exact scenario hasn't happened in the past where people's families and safety were threatened or anything. And look, there's a lot of examples of how this technology can be and is being used against us. I don't need to list them all off and like fear-monger this whole video, but all I'm trying to show you is that it exists and that there is resistance to this stuff. I've personally made the choice to not film my kid and post him on the internet because I think that the choice to be online is a thing that a person should be able to make as a decision for themselves with a full understanding of what that means. And a lot of people are making this choice for their kids, too, because um it's not chill out there. It's It's not a fun place to be if you're like a kid. Honestly, it's not even that fun as an adult most of the time. And we talked about this in our smartphones video and kind of in our hobbies video, too, because we're seeing this cultural split where we have people who are consuming more and more stuff online, existing more and more online. And then there is a section of society that is rejecting that and specifically going out of their way to find not online, not filmed versions of life. And I think that it's good that we push back on some of these things or at least question why we are buying these products because how we choose to document or not document our life has a big impact. And another example of this is Tyler the Creator's recent album, Don't Tap the Glass, is all about existing in physical spaces and truly being in the moment. Tapping the glass meaning, you know, touching your phone. He wants people dancing and enjoying themselves at his shows rather than holding their phone up in the air like this for the entire concert. And you see this tying in to what we're seeing for nightclubs now where we have phone free dance floors. A big reason that people don't want to let loose on the dance floor nowadays is that they're afraid of being recorded in public and the de facto social media scrutiny that might come along with that. I know all millennials say this, but like I can't imagine if my childhood was documented in the way that childhoods are being documented today. Like I did a bunch of degenerate terrible [ __ ] If it was being filmed, I mean, I'd be in a viral video, you know, and people would be pulling up old clips of me doing dumbass [ __ ] that I really would not feel good about. >> Hey, Marca. >> Hey, Jed. How are you? >> Good. You have lovely breasts. Oh, thank you, Jed. Thank you. >> I really hope people don't start searching for that now. But like, could you imagine like somebody in the club wearing freaking Meta Ray-B bands, bro? You're dancing, you're having a good time, and then you turn around and there's this dude just standing there with glasses on and the lights just flashing at you.
I think the problem is is it's really easy to get excited by new tech. Like, it is it's thrilling, but we don't always think about the consequences of the new tech when we're buying it. And also, like, do you need this? Like, what's the real use case for a pair of glasses that have cameras in them? Unless you're an influencer who's looking to film old people in restaurants all day. And all of this sort of feels like it's heading towards a, you know, we live in a technofudist society and it's 1984 and everybody's going to die and kill each other at the same time. But I don't think that that's uh a particularly helpful mindset. It is very fun to be uh doomerist nowadays. Like I know that we're guilty of this too. We put like we're cooked in thumbnails and stuff like that. But you have to be aware of what is happening in the world. You can't ignore that these things exist. However, I think we have to acknowledge that there is nuance here, right? We have artists making albums that are specifically calling this out. We have movies and social references to our entire cultures resistance to this kind of thing. And hopefully as we evolve and as we grow into this stuff, it'll be like the internet, right? We thought people were going to go crazy and start worshiping Satan because they were reading books. So, with every technological shift, we always fear the worst. We're always afraid of new changes and what might come with them. And I think that's healthy. I think it's good to be skeptical. But also, don't let this video like ruin your day. Like, you know, you need to take everything with a grain of salt, including what I have to say. As hard as that is for me to admit, cuz I think everything that I say is really impressive and interesting. >> I want to see some serious poundage right now. Come on. >> But thanks for watching today's video. If you liked it, like it and uh subscribe if you want to see content from us every single week. Bye y'all. [Music]