How Pick Up Artists Have Evolved Technologically

Words: Elle Jones

‘POV:RIZZ’ is the caption splashed across a TikTok video with 14.3 million views. A young woman in a striped uniform is followed into the frame from a high angle reminiscent of POV-style porn videos, and the man behind the camera asks, “Do you sell shoes here?” She smiles incredulously, given the setting is a shoe shop, and informs him that everything available is on display. As she walks away, he says “Nah, I’m just joking, I thought you were pretty”. She tries to leave, but he stops her again, asking for her Instagram handle, which she insists she can’t provide as she’s working. Scroll down, and you’ll encounter video after skin-crawling video of high-angle shots where a faceless man behind a camera approaches women going about their business in public, and uploads it to an audience of millions without consent. 

This account is one of many where videos are filmed using ‘smart’ glasses, primarily produced by Meta and eyewear manufacturer EssilorLuxottica. Smart glasses look like regular eyewear, but have built-in cameras which allow the wearer to record hands-free.

The aim of this kind of smart glasses content is to demonstrate rizz - internet speak for charisma - and an ability to ‘easily’ chat up girls. Rizz videos are a subset of ‘manfluencer’ content. Manfluencer content includes videos and posts made by male influencers who capitalise on men’s financial and emotional insecurities to shill regressive gender norms, and often bill themselves in opposition to the pitfalls of ‘woke’ modernity, including gender equality. 

This content is a continuation of sleazy pick-up artist types popularised in the 1970s. Pick-up artists are a subculture of men who use, and often sell, techniques to seduce women, with a legacy spanning from books like How to Pick Up Girls (1968) to Andrew Tate’s YouTube Shorts. Using smart glasses, pick-up artists can demonstrate their techniques in real-time without anyone knowing. 
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“Once the idea of the ever-present watcher is internalised, the prison guards have no need to use force.”

The women featured in these videos are placed in an uncomfortable scenario where, if they respond to advances, they are derided for being ‘easy’, and if they don’t, they’re called bitches. Dilara, 21, was filmed in London on her lunch break, and gave the man her phone number. The number was visible in the video, which got millions of views, and she was bombarded for weeks with harassing phone calls and messages. She answered a call in the middle of the night and a male stranger said to her “Do you know how stupid you are? Do you know how easy that made you look?” The video was eventually taken down for inciting harassment, but the damage was already done.

Sickening comments flooded the videos I reviewed for this piece. One user wrote “all of them ere [sic] so easy and give number for some chit chat of 2 minutes.” When women are unresponsive or say they have boyfriends, commenters refuse to accept it and advise “she was feeling you really, follow her home”. The threat to the safety of women and girls is real and climbing. Emma Pickering, Head of Technology-Facilitated Abuse and Economic Empowerment at Refuge, the UK’s largest specialist domestic abuse organisation, told me that “Referrals to Refuge’s specialist Technology-Facilitated Abuse and Economic Empowerment team rose by more than 62% in 2025 compared to 2024, with the final three months of the year the highest on record for a single quarter.” 

Despite the clear ability abusers have to weaponise this kind of technology, there is little evidence that Big Tech has seriously considered the possibility. The most popular model of smart glasses, the Ray-Ban Meta Wayfarer, allows users to “react to what you see, take pictures and videos, listen on the go, make calls and send messages without touching your phone”. As enticing as taking video calls without hauling out your laptop is, the recording features are all but unregulated. Meta encourages users to “respect people’s preferences”, and “let that capture LED light shine”, but in practice, there are almost no safeguards to prevent users recording covertly with the glasses. 

On TikTok, it’s clear that the women are not aware they are being filmed, despite the alleged inability for users to turn off the LED capture light. There’s no need to scour the dark web for solutions to this problem. I simply googled ‘how to turn off capture light smart glasses’, and the ever-present Gemini AI overview instantly provided a list of methods from easy, temporary coverage to permanent modification. 

Covert or otherwise, the law in the UK currently allows filming in public spaces as long as it does not contravene other laws surrounding harassment and stalking. Technology companies are also able to innovate faster than legislators can place guardrails on their products. Emma also explained that “Refuge supports countless survivors subjected to tech-facilitated abuse every single day. Time and again, we see what happens when devices go to market without proper consideration of how they might be used to harm women and girls.” Sell first, ask questions later, seems to be the prevailing attitude of Big Tech. 

Using wearable technology in this manner is not just about policing women’s behaviour, but also encouraging them to police themselves. At risk of dealing the final blow to an overused piece of social theory, I’m uneasily reminded of Jeremy Bentham’s 1971 Panopticon. He theorised a circular prison featuring individual cells surrounding a central tower, in which a hidden watcher could observe all inmates. This design aimed to create a sense of constant, internalised surveillance which would force prisoners to modify their behaviour automatically. Michel Foucault popularised the Panopticon in Discipline and Punish (1975), writing that its major effect is to “induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power.” 

Once the idea of the ever-present watcher is internalised, the prison guards have no need to use force. The inmates will police themselves, and the power over them is “automatic”. The power of the threat of being filmed, uploaded to the internet, and publicly humiliated in front of millions is enough to make anyone want to shrink into the background, and is designed to tell women “we’re always watching you, so act accordingly.” Whether it’s covertly filming women on nights out or filming secretly through creepy spyglasses, the possibility of the invisible camera creates a self-policing subject, who knows not to be too easily chatted up, nor too frigid, and who is always on her best behaviour. 

Make no mistake, these glasses are terrible for women’s safety, but also bad for the ability to have normal relations between the sexes. As is visible in the videos where the men are “successful”, some women are happy to be approached politely in public. However, the fear of being filmed and uploaded to an invisible audience of millions of hateful watchers fills daily interactions with suspicion and fear. Why would anyone react positively to being approached when there is the possibility of having your every move ripped apart by millions of internet users? Women will police their own behaviour in order to be safer, but it’s an endless cycle. Emerging, as-yet-unregulated technology creates a new method that is quickly co-opted by abusers, and the capabilities of the central surveillance tower expand beyond the prison cell, extending into the nightclub, the shoe shop, the street, and elsewhere, until every interaction is policed and sanitised to fulfil the standards of the ever-present watcher.