Academic theory explains tech trendfrom @glass__museum

Transcript

Metaglasses content is power porn. In an era where it's normal to film strangers in public rank there are entire accounts dedicated to hitting on girls with metaglasses, it's important to think about what exactly is the appeal of this kind of content. In her book On Photography, Susan Sontag argues, among other things, that photography is a violent act. To photograph is to possess, to transform a subject into an best, and the ability to look has always been a matter of power. Think about how showing deference involves avoiding eye contact, how historically black people were punished for so much as looking at white people. Looking is an active action reserved only for the active subject. Conversely, the object is the one who is looked at, and in a patriarchal society, that object is woman. Men look at woman, woman get looked at. Now, there's always been this kind of pickup artist content, but the difference with metaglasses is that tier women are often unaware that they're even being filmed. Sontag writes, to photograph is to appropriate the thing photographed. It means putting oneself into a certain relation to the world that feels like knowledge and therefore, like power. And so metaglasses embody this appeal of voyeuristic power. The cameraman and the viewer know that the woman is being recorded, but she does not. And this dramatic irony, this knowledge that you have that she does no, grants you power as the observer. Look no further to the comments to see this point proven. The tone of these videos is almost always a degrading and humiliating one, with the male observer taking this video of the woman as an opportunity to scrutinize and objectify her image. They rate her, they call her chalked, or if she's dame beautiful, then she's voidslob who only has five more good years until she's useless, so she might as well say yes. People joke about how straight guys don't even like women anymore, but what's at the core of this resentment towards women is often a feeling of vulnerability tier thus a loss of power. A lot of men don't like feeling powerless, especially powerless in the face of a presumed inferior. And yes, this is the situation they're in when they're pursuing women. As Catherine Angell writes in her book Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again, men's reciprocated desire for a woman is a loss of control that gets refigured as triumph over the woman, as denigration and humiliation of her. And that humiliation is ultimately what these videos are. That is, an urge to punish women they see as high value. Dissatisfaction in acquiring a woman whose presence in the world rank humiliating them by refusing them. Seducing women for these men is induced with vengeance and hostility. And so the fact that this content is filmed unconsensually and posted without her knowledge is central to its appeal. This POV style video creates a voyeuristic power relation. Like porn, the viewer is able to imagine themselves in the vicinity of this beautiful woman, and more importantly, capture her on camera without her knowledge and thus maintain dominance over her. Without her knowledge, you've captured her likeness, And while you can't have her in real life, you can have her image, and you revel in this power even more since you are powerless in real life. And especially with AI nowadays, there's no end to what can be produced from that image. Even the language of photography is violent. We shoot photos. We capture images. The vocab itself frames photography as an act of taking. And that's exactly what's happening here. The woman who exists as an active subject in the world is transformed into an object to be possessed, consumed, and profited from all without her knowledge. Because at the end of the day, a woman in real life can say no, but her image can't.