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Courtney McAnuff was<\/span> out of a year-long relationship<\/a> in the summer of 2024 and starting to date again when she agreed to grab drinks with a potential suitor.<\/p>\n They met at a bar in midtown Manhattan<\/a>. 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.<\/p>\n \u201cI wasn\u2019t familiar with them,\u201d 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\u2019s viewpoint. He let her try them on and even showed her a couple of videos that he\u2019d taken previously, she says. \u201cThat was it. We stopped talking about it after that. I figured that was the end of the use.\u201d<\/p>\n The next day, checking her Instagram, McAnuff noticed she\u2019d 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. \u201cI felt super violated,\u201d McAnuff says. \u201cLike, what if I don\u2019t want everyone knowing what I\u2019m up to? He felt so free to film me and post it. There was no conversation about it.\u201d<\/p>\n Meta sold more than 7 million<\/a> 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\u2019re at work<\/a>. The phenomenon, which has also spread to pickup artists hitting on women, has earned the hardware the nickname \u201ccreep glasses<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n Among singles, and particularly women, Meta\u2019s AI-powered eyewear has become a recurring nuisance, as people share a spreading unease<\/a> about being covertly filmed<\/a> on dates.<\/p>\n \u201cBan those glasses completely,\u201d posted<\/a> a young woman on Bluesky in August, writing that her date \u201cleaned over to show me pictures he took of me I had no idea he was taking.\u201d One TikToker claimed in a video<\/a> after a date that she \u201cimmediately felt uncomfortable,\u201d questioning why people are \u201cso comfortable videoing everything. It\u2019s a terrible way to portray yourself, wearing a fucking camera on your face and you\u2019re sitting in my face.\u201d<\/p>\n In a Reddit post from August<\/a>, users debated the ethics of the trend, wondering if it was OK to continue a date when someone showed up wearing them; in a separate thread<\/a>, one person said they had ghosted a guy after realizing he\u2019d worn the glasses on their date. \u201cI didn\u2019t notice until toward the end of the night. I kissed him while he was wearing the glasses,\u201d they said. In July, a man was put under investigation<\/a> in Seoul, South Korea, for allegedly filming four women he had gone out with and later uploading clips to social media, according to The Korea Herald.<\/p>\n In many regards, dating has been reframed by our dependency on technology. Apps connect people. Chatbots are used for all sorts of things these days: as wingmen and for role-play<\/a>. Smartphone cameras capture important moments together. But while a phone being held up to someone\u2019s face gives them a clear opportunity to object, smart glasses largely erase that opportunity. (Meta\u2019s glasses do have a front-facing LED that switches on when the glasses are recording, but the light is the only warning, and it can be disabled by hacking the hardware.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n