Meta just released a new ad for its creeper glasses. In the video, Kylie Jenner, the new face of the glasses called Starfire, goes through a day-in-the-life style video from her point of view. Mostly, she\u2019s led around her own house in a haze by various vendors and assistants. Kylie\u2019s character makes half a glass of green smoothie, then we watch her bland interactions with a guy cleaning her pool, a grinning skincare brand employee who gently puts some cream on her hand and whispers \u201calright, let\u2019s move,\u201d someone bringing her a bouquet from her mom (she replies \u201cthanks…\u201d) and people moving a huge weird sculpture around her cavernous home.\u00a0The most emotion she displays in the ad is when she grabs a Persian cat and hoists it in a way I\u2019d stop a toddler from doing. In a jarring transition away from the cat and the movers, we see her start inexplicably grabbing black spray paint from her massive closet (???) and jumping in an unbranded black SUV, then speeding to a billboard of her own face. In another unsettling transition that would work in an Ari Aster horror movie, the perspective is no longer from her own eyes, but from about 30 yards behind the car. We watch as she gets out, saunters to the blank space on the weirdly low-set billboard, and sprays \u201cXO, KYLIE.\u201d\u00a0Meta has endured years of brand crises with its smart glasses. In the years since Ray-Ban Meta glasses have been available to the public, we\u2019ve almost exclusively seen them associated with cops, various gestapo-type stooges, unemployed creeps, and that guy at happy hour who wants to show you how the light turns on when it\u2019s recording. During that time, 404 Media has documented all of this, and in the course of that reporting, heard time and time again from Meta that the glasses are NOT that creepy and definitely NOT cop-glasses.\u00a0\u00a0When Jason broke the story about a Customs and Border Control (CBP) agent wearing Ray-Ban Metas to a raid, a Meta spokesperson asked 404 Media a series of questions about the framing of the article, stressing that Meta does not have a contract with CBP. The spokesperson asked why 404 mentioned Meta in this story \u2014 again, a story about Meta\u2019s glasses seen on the face of an immigration officer. \u201cI\u2019m curious if you can explain why it is Meta will be mentioned by name in this piece when in previous 404 reporting regarding ICE facial recognition app and follow up reporting the term \u2018smartphones\u2019 or \u2018phone\u2019 is used despite ICE agents clearly using Apple iPhones and Android devices,\u201d they said. I actually can\u2019t parse this statement to this day. But Meta has seemed pretty stressed about the image of its smart glasses and slick Ray-Ban partnership for a long time. For them to sell to a mass market, the company desperately needed them to stop being associated with loser behavior, fast.Each of us here have wondered aloud at various points in the last few years about whether Ray-Bans, the once-cool, hipster-coded, mid-luxury sunglasses brand, would keep tolerating this slow image suicide by association with Meta\u2019s depraved quest for a more complete consumerist surveillance state. In October, Emanuel wrote: \u201cI wonder how long Ray-Ban will want to be associated with this product, and if it\u2019s going to tank the reputation of one of the most iconic fashion items in the world before it pulls out.\u201d Ray-Ban hasn\u2019t pulled out from its other offerings, as far as I can tell, and those glasses have reportedly made Meta and Ray-Ban\u2019s parent company a boatload of money. There are many different brands and types of smart glasses being sold by Meta now, with other glasses brands. But it\u2019s noteworthy that for this new It-Girl iteration, Ray-Ban is not along for the ride.\u00a0So: Meta\u2019s in a coolness crisis, cops and stalkers are tainting the concept worse than Google Glassholes ever did, they had one chance. In comes Kylie. With the Starfire glasses, we have a few decades-long arcs coming full circle.\u00a0Podcast: Why Are DHS Agents Wearing Meta Ray-Bans?CBP\u2019s use of Meta Ray-Bans; the bargain that voice actors are having to make with AI; and how Flock tech is being essentially hacked into by the DEA.Meta\u2019s products have been accused and found guilty of damaging young people\u2019s self esteem, especially girls\u2019 confidence and mental health, year after year to the point that it can only be described as a business strategy. Just this week, the company lost its bid to dismiss a lawsuit brought by 29 attorneys general who claim that \u201cresearch has shown that children’s use of \u200bFacebook and Instagram could lead to depression, anxiety, insomnia, interference with education and daily life, and \u200bself-harm including suicide,\u201d Reuters reported. Meta has built the world\u2019s most profitable and popular panopticon; Smart glasses that turn everyone into an influencer, narc, and walking data collection apparatus are the logical next step. Meta\u2019s original mistake was aiming for middle aged men, the primary market for Ray-Bans. No one thinks that demographic defines coolness; women aged 18-24, however, have been right there all along. They just had to make the glasses slightly less nerdy looking, and put them on the world\u2019s most recognizable, aspirational, brand-safe face.They had a lot of these to choose from, and I\u2019m not saying other influencers, or the celebrity influencer pool in general, is pure of heart apart from Kylie Jenner and the Kardashian extended universe. And the Kardashian name has its own poisonous brand associations that would rule Kim or Kylie\u2019s other sisters out of the running for Meta\u2019s new glasses product spokesperson. The Kardashians, while controlling and at times subverting the ways reality television and our parasocial culture prey on women\u2019s bodies, could shake hands with Meta\u2019s influence on girls\u2019 body image. They\u2019ve dictated the course of beauty standards unsubtly and effectively for years, to the point of becoming an endless research topic for social scientists, psychologists and anthropologists. Being like Kylie is seen as being cool, effortless, skinny, rich, unopinionated and unproblematic. And lonely.\u00a0The lifestyle in Meta\u2019s latest glasses ad portrays an unattainably wealthy and kind of bored existence where Kylie never sees another person who isn\u2019t on her payroll. These Meta glasses are anti-social from the jump. If all we have is this ad to judge the product, they\u2019re not about capturing memories with your friends at the bar or a party. They\u2019re about packaging one\u2019s life and then viewing it as an out-of-body experience, like you\u2019re already dead. As a piece of media, the ad is the inverse of Chris Samra\u2019s \u201cstealth\u201d Waves smart glasses video, which portrayed the social life of a total fuckhead.\u00a0\u00a0Contrast these with projects like Jenny Zhang\u2019s Computer Angel, a hair clip camera prototype that records her life from her point of view. She records nights out, passes it to other people, takes it off and sticks it on railings to record herself dancing. The important part is that it looks like a camera on the wearer\u2019s head, and isn\u2019t trying to disappear. It reminds me of the very early days of lifecasting, the early 2000s genre of online live stream pioneered by Jennifer Ringley\u2019s Jennicam and also countless early webcam models. I won\u2019t romanticize that time, however: Justin Kan\u2019s Justin.tv, a 2007 experiment in livestreaming, famously caught him getting swatted in his San Francisco apartment while on stream and was funded by Y Combinator and sponsored by companies like Zipcar and Bawls energy drinks (RIP). It grew into what we now know as Twitch.\u00a0Maybe it doesn\u2019t matter that the Starfire glasses, or the Ray-Ban Metas, are an attempt to hide the camera from the subject. We assume the camera is everywhere now, anyway, and we all act like it. The primary emotions I feel watching the new ad are sadness and a vague, quiet discontentment. Meanwhile, Instagram is already full of young people, primarily women, unboxing, reviewing, and promoting the glasses. With Kylie\u2019s star power behind these glasses, we risk losing our grip on the last shred of privacy, autonomy, and control of our own images online.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"