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Comment by Brendinooo | Hacker News Reader

I don't love the idea of smart glasses and I'm definitely very concerned about the implications of their widespread adoption. And yes, most of what we've seen hasn't looked very good.

But when I see a headline like "tacky men with ridiculous glasses" I get a sense that the intent is more to persuade via bullying than anything else, which...I dunno. Doesn't feel great!

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It also seems incredibly shortsighted. No fashion conscious person would have been caught dead wearing a smartwatch circa 2012, then Apple partnered with Hermes and eventually things changed. There are all sorts of valid complaints against this tech, but fashion is something so ephemeral that it's a silly to act like it is a long-term hindrance to adoption.

No fashion forward person wears an Apple watch. Anyone, who remotely cares about what's on their wrist wears a whoop and a traditional watch.

Problem with the Apple Watch is it does too much. They should have never enabled Apps on the Apple Watch. Kept it super simple. I hope they'll come up with a new version with an improved form factor and better battery life soon.

Ignoring the fashion context (to which, no comment), totally agree.

I have an Apple Watch SE that I got the battery refurbed after 5 years, 95% of my use is a quick check on my next calendar, setting timers, managing the morning alarm, and tracking medication and exercise. Oh, and constantly putting it into power save mode after I take it off the charger.

It's not a cellular model, so the other 5% is basically letting me know my phone has something to tell me. I have in the past tried to put games on it, but purely as a novelty.

> Apple partnered with Hermes and eventually things changed

no, they didn't; the people who buy Hermes bags still wear Rolex, Cartier, Patek Philippe, ...

It's the "cheaper" Swiss watches -- those in the same price range as the higher end Apple Watches (sub $1000) that have suffered.

I find it to be an acceptable use of mockery, one of the most powerful cultural methods of exposing that the emperor has no clothes

I'm not finding it to be any different from "Four eyes!"

Prescription glasses are a medical device that corrects for a disability.

This shit ain't it.

Why are you trying so hard to shoehorn inappropriate criticism of people with disabilities... Into appropriate criticism of this technocrap?

zuck is trying to push bad, ugly glasses to profit at the expense of causing nefarious social impact. the blog is mocking the ugliness of the glasses. it represents how out of touch zuck is. i’m not sure how you got to “four eyes” from there

> zuck is trying to push bad, ugly glasses

...

> i’m not sure how you got to “four eyes” from there

I'm guessing you're younger than me. In my youth, having glasses meant being ugly.

i know what it means. you’re projecting something completely inappropriate, i’m guessing from your own life, onto the blogs criticism.

It doesn't mean that anymore. But having "smart glasses" does mean "jerk".

You use normal glasses to see better. You buy a smart glass to record people without their knowledge. The only thing similar in these objects is that your wear them on your face.

although it's true and funny that rich assholes often have terrible taste, it's important that criticism of pervert glasses doesn't make their ugliness load-bearing. what happens if the next gen looks good, we're suddenly okay with them?

i dont think the blog is proposing a long-term criteria. the ugliness is funny and worth noting now because its currently happening and a great symbol of them pushing plainly horrible stuff down our throats

It's not about taste! They're literally too big to function effectively! If you bed over to look at something they will fall off your face. It's like offering running shoes with kilogram-weight batteries on the bottom, a basic failure to understand the problem.

I can't believe people are trying to make excuses for a product that is clearly not ready for consumer applications.

In this instance, it's directed at people who are literally at the top of the world, having amassed almost unthinkable power and influence, and want to start a fashion trend specifically to grow their business empires.

So yeah, it's a tiny bit different than bullying a classmate for having bad eyesight.

> it's directed at people who are literally at the top of the world

The very first sentence in the article associates people who wear these with "pervs".

So no, this is not merely directed at "the top of the world".

As an aside: VRs were "the cool thing" in the 90's and 00's. They never became practical, and fell out of favor. "Normal" people never stopped mocking those who used them. Now that Meta has made glasses that actually come close to looking normal, tech folks mock back ...? I just don't get it.

Yes, I get all the privacy concerns. But making fun because of very subjective reasons like appearance? It undercuts all the privacy concerns.

People need to grow up.

This would be a great argument if there were any non-pervy application for these glasses. They're marketed at people who already have screens and better cameras in their pockets and on their wrists. "Clandestine" use cases are the only application here.

Ugh, trying not to get baited into stuff like this but -

There are absolutely non-pervy reasons why your hands might be occupied but you want to record a video.

This is why gopros exist.

I mean, this is logically no different than saying that we shouldn't use smartphone cameras because DSLRs exist.

It is, because when you're using a smartphone camera you're not trying to hide the fact that you're filming, or at least it's harder to do so. There are already ways to film without having to hold a camera, and those ways produce a better product. The advantage of the glasses is you can be a creep but be less obvious about it.

- glasses are only for "clandestine" use

- any use case I could suggest will be dismissed because other tools exist

- those tools are "better" partly because they're not covert

- which re-asserts that covertness is the glasses' only distinguishing feature

- therefore the only use is being a creep

Am I reading this right? If so, it's circular, and I don't think I can do much more than just point that out.

Ah yes, because DSLRs are hands free?

I agree but I also feel like surely these are so few and far between that no reasonable person would introduce a new tech device into their day-to-day wear for this purpose?

You really just don’t require constant recording of your surroundings, in a way that is not socially acceptable, in order to get around your hands being full.

In the situations where we DO need that capability, we already have solutions, like go pros. What makes this different is that these are for all the time, and targeted at candid strangers in public. Not, like, the mountain bike path. So, to me, that makes them fundamentally perverted.

> This would be a great argument if there were any non-pervy application for these glasses.

Have you even bothered researching it?

Can you please go and respond to the comments in this submission and let them know you are denying their reality?

Use a GoPro or something. You'll get better quality video and you won't look like you're trying to hide the fact that you're filming.

So it's clear you're not going to bother researching into why people use it.

No, I don't need to research it. I have all the evidence I need.

> The very first sentence in the article associates people who wear these with "pervs".

But they're literally the target market. Nobody else needs a hidden camera on their face.

... These are people with fine vision, wearing ugly glasses by choice. It's not at all comparable.

I can criticize anyone's choices. Needing glasses is not a choice. Wearing Meta creep-shot raybans is a choice i will never stop criticizing

The point of that story was that everyone was going along with something that was obviously nonsense, and the kid who breaks the spell simply tells the truth.

In this situation most people don't buy smart glasses because they don't look good or have a killer use case. It's not the same thing.

it is spiritually the same even if its not exactly the same

Stating the obvious truth and mocking are, spiritually, two very different things.

no, they’re not

Whatever, man. Making fun of those losers is the least damage we can cause to them. No need to defend the Zucks and co. like they were kids (although I agree they behave like children).

They are literally deforming his ears, as you can see in this near-profile photo. If you wear these for more than 5-10 minutes at a time you will either find them painfully uncomfortable or you will damage your ear cartilage. The might have worked great as part of an integrated helmet or something, as glasses they completely fail.

https://www.tomsguide.com/news/live/snap-specs-launch-live-l...

Yup. You're supporting my point, right? People see stuff like that and don't buy it as a result. The emperor doesn't have new clothes, and nobody is acting like he does.

His employees and the lickspittle tech blog press are

But they are ridiculous glasses. They're so big that they're visibly crushing the top of the Snapchat guy's ears. As a lifelong glasses wearer, this is a billboard size red flag.

This is an emperor's new clothes kinda situation. You could say 'our royal personage seems to be experiencing a sartorial deficit' or you could say 'the emperor's butt naked.'

I think there’s a difference between full-on “bullying” and what I’d call “blunt criticism”. I think bullying requires an intent to silence or otherwise coerce through fear. Blunt criticism is more about skipping the niceties and saying it plainly, and accepting that your subject might get offended as a result. Calling someone “tacky” is way more in the blunt criticism camp I think. It’s certainly not “nice”, but there’s no way that I read this blog article as trying to change Mark Zuckerberg’s mind through fear. Nobody is getting pilloried for being tacky, and tackiness can even be repositioned as desirable through the lens of nostalgia or similar.

Does it make you feel like getting them out of spite? Real question.

Real answer: more than I'd like. I am a contrarian who has intentionally worked to temper that impulse.

But...nah, not really.

I will say though: The only time I know for sure I knew someone had a pair of Meta Ray-Bans was in my kid's youth baseball league; The coach would film the kids batting while he pitched and shared the videos with us. People loved it. There are definitely cases where hands-free video recording would come in handy.

A GoPro with a chest or hat harness would take much better videos

The benefit of glasses is that you know for sure what they're recording cause they're recording pretty much what you're looking at. A GoPro on your chest could be angled weirdly and you'd have no idea.

> hat harness

> I get a sense that the intent is more to persuade via bullying than anything else, which...I dunno. Doesn't feel great!

Most advertising persuades you with less-than-rational means. It's just fighting fire with fire.

And it's quite justified, because in this case, it punches up against a technology with a net-negative social impact.

I, of course, could never confirm intent in an online comment thread, but I suspect that some people like to give themselves permission to be mean.

(This suspicion hasn't been lessened by some of the replies I've received.)

Slips past the filters when “Voyeur glasses let you record your creepy interactions with females” gets flagged.

I know what you're saying—but there's also an Emperor's New Clothes aspect to this. I mean, someone might really need to say, "Hey guys, and you also look ridiculous."

(Edit: I should read more of the comments—someone beat me to it.)

None of those mentioned in this post will ever read it. I wish I could persuade Zuck to be a less awful person…

They are billionaires, so it’s fine for us to make fun of them (because the joke is on us)

Lack of bullying is exactly why the world is now run by sociopathic dorks like the ones pictured in the article

Is this meant to be even close to a reasonable perspective?

I could equally say "Bullying is exactly why Trump is in power and Elon Musk ran DOGE".

Both can be true.

This seems implausible.

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