“MASS SURVEILLANCE PREDATOR GLASSES”

There it was, plastered in bold, white letters on a poster on 14th Street, a particularly buzzy strip in Washington, DC, lined with bars, clubs and a Jeni’s Ice Creams blissfully opened until 1 a.m. on weekends.

Despite its satire, the spoof advertisement shows the reality of Ray-Ban Meta artificial intelligence glasses as a dangerous tool of our growing surveillance state by allowing wearers to slyly record anything – and anyone – they see. This poster stopped me in my tracks because its nihilism – or existentialism, even – belies a sense of cool.

Lifted from an actual Meta campaign, the poster's image includes a close-up of Kylie Jenner’s face, adorned with said Ray-Ban Meta shades, her mouth agape, revealing star stickers stuck to her tongue. Her blacked-out sunglasses are sleek and trendy among stylish youth, and the tongue stickers resemble pimple patches that have become a sort of face accessory for that same demographic.

Perhaps the “chic-est” thing about this image is its covert message: Jenner’s eyes may be unseen, but she’s still surveilling you.

It’s the appeal to cool that makes this image so unnerving. The Meta glasses aren’t being depicted as a ground-breaking technology, but another tech-y accessory for the masses – the youths, in........

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