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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 21, 2025

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What do folks on the Motte think of the "Waves" glasses? Here is the link, quoting the short tweet:

introducing Waves, camera glasses for creators.

record in stealth. livestream all day.

pre-order now.

The idea seems to be another in the long string of VC-funded tech companies who seek to make their name on being controversial in the beginning, and slowly becoming socially accepted. It's extremely frustrating that this profit model seems to work, but we can't deny it does (some of the time) at this point.

On the one hand I'm deeply incensed at the thought of other people recording me without my consent. On the other hand... we already waived these rights two decades ago with the Patriot Act, effectively allowing the government and major corporations to spy on us all the time with no repercussions. I personally find it hard to be sympathetic to outrage against these glasses when our nation's legal system has completely bankrupted any notion of a personal right not to be filmed anyway.

I'm not sure which side of the culture war this benefits either. As it stands, it seems a pretty predictable evolution of trends we've been seeing in privacy and technology for a while in the West.

i can see some cashiers wearing these to protect themselves from accusations of rudeness/racism.

"gimme cigarettes."

  • "of course, what type"

"newps"

  • "grabs Newports"

"no the tall pack"

  • "*grabs the tall pack"

"no the tall soft pack man. what the fuck"

  • "of course sir. one moment. *grabs newport softpack 100's". I just need to scan your ID"

"man what the fuck. fuck you. you saying I look like a kid"

  • "I'm sorry sir. I just have to scan the ID of anyone who looks under 30" (guy looks 17)

"this is bullshit. you racist man. fuck you. i wanna see your manager man. what the fuck"

  • "grabs manager"

"hey i just wanted to get cigarettes and he's acting all racist. calling me a kid. and rude too. you know how he does this?"


it's a nationwide scourge. and, wanting to avoid an escalation scene, a company is absolutely inclined to throw a peon under the bus if it means avoiding a nationwide scandal.

at some point people in low status positions whose jobs are under daily threat will start to look to technology like this to protect themselves.

Don't stores already have CCTV?

Yet another advance of the digital panopticon justified by anarcho-tyranny.

You'll get digital ID for the same reasons, you'll see.

You'll get digital ID for the same reasons, you'll see.

Will anything prevent people from simply using internet without said ID?

iirc this has already happened in South Korea.

I suppose it's only a matter of time.

Such is life.

If the management is ok with cashiers wearing cameras, they are very likely also willing to use visible video cameras for the same purpose.

If I was a manager, I would not want employees to record continuous footage on private devices. Their interests are not aligned with the store's interests. E.g. it is in the "creator's" interest if a video of fat people buying tons of unhealthy food goes viral. It is not in the interests of the store.

"I'm sorry sir. I just have to scan the ID of anyone who looks under 30" (guy looks 17)

Despite the presence of a posted sign that says that we only have to check the ID of anyone who looks under 40, management requires that we check the ID of everyone period. I'm honestly not sure how much of this is that management thinks we're too retarded to estimate people's ages and how much of it is management figuring that it'll offend people (mostly women) for us to estimate that they look over 40 regardless of accuracy.

I'm honestly not sure how much of this is that management thinks we're too retarded to estimate people's ages

There is that, of course, but I think this is just CYA from management for scenarios such as the one outlined by Westphalianpeace. Can't be accused of racism if you're scanning everyone's ID.

(Of course they still can, and will, accuse you of racism and management will still throw you under the bus despite any video evidence to the contrary because a law suit is the last thing they need and some bleeding-heart activist judge will rule that asking a potentially underage urban youth for ID is racism on the same level of voter suppression, don't you know minorities have little free time to get, or access to, forms of ID you bigot? But it's a tiny shred of protection for both the business and the employees.)

In my experience, the people who get angry about their ID getting checked aren't really correlated with race. It's mostly old men who are upset that they're aging and aren't even getting the consolation prize of not needing to get their ID checked.

I think that there is a difference. Glassholes pose a different threat to privacy than governments or big corporations.

If I am in a McDonalds, I am probably recorded by security cameras. But it is also highly probable that McDonalds will not decide upload that footage in some viral video about funny incidents at their restaurants.

Likewise, the NSA can read my text messages. But again, I don't have to worry about featuring in "best of captured texts today", at the most some perv NSA employees will have a laugh with some other pervert spooks about it.

Sure, both government and commercial entities can get hacked, so I would prefer for McDonalds to delete their videos after a week or so (and they share that incentive).

By contrast, if I am recorded by some random pervert with a cell phone, the probability that I will land on the internet is much higher. This is why people react much stronger about cell phones pointed at them than about security cameras.

If someone openly records, my instinct is to tolerate it if they are clearly recording something other than me, and just move out of the picture. By contrast, if some asshole covertly records people without any extenuating context, I very much hope they will make "glassholes got their cameras and jaws broken collection, part 563".

Yeahhh...

I think there's a lot of work being done by cultural norms of "we are recording you for safety and security purposes, and we will never publish footage except to advance those goals." Hell, nobody is even going to look at that footage except to detect the criminal activity.

And we've been acclimatized out of those norms as high quality digital cameras are now everywhere.

And the understanding of 'privacy' is a bit ambiguous.

For me, I would agree that "I have the right to stop anyone from recording me while I'm out in public" is stupid. But, "I have a reasonable expectation that my face/identity won't be published on the internet if I'm not doing anything dangerous or illegal" is a decent standard, I think.

Otherwise, we kind of move towards a world where everyone dons a disguise out in public just to maintain some semblance of anonymity.

Any controversy about, say, recordings in bathrooms is going to go through the roof if these things become commonplace. You can (maybe) grab some pervert with a phone in the women's bathroom or changing room, but someone just wearing a pair of spectacles?

Otherwise, we kind of move towards a world where everyone dons a disguise out in public just to maintain some semblance of anonymity.

Perhaps the political valence of wearing a facemask in public spaces will do a complete 180. Or better yet, burqas for everyone, not just women.

Isn't this basically just Google Glass?

I mean, I wouldn't allow these in my house, but we're used to the idea of being recorded all the time in public. Security cameras are everywhere(and one needs no special permission to put them up), there's people livestreaming, taking selfies with others in the background, etc.

Cameraphones were what killed the privacy expectation. Not these things.

Twitch is basically softcore pornography at this point. So much "content" revolves around implicitly or explicitly referencing sex, and even the most innocent looking female streamers are apparently sex-crazed addicts or are at least pretending to be?

I have a very dim view of livestreaming.

I really, REAAALLLY despise that for any given popular female internet figure, there's at least even odds that their 'main' account, where-ever that may be, is the top of a sales funnel that leads to some kind of sex work at the bottom.

I also despise that the 'meta' for such accounts is almost always to pretend not to have a boyfriend even if they are fucking married, and to deflect but not reject the misguided romantic ambitions of their followers.

And the "joyous" thing about people streaming the entirety of their lives all the time is that when they end up having a meltdown, its aired publicly for drama points too.

Its about the most toxic cycle of drama begetting drama for a hapless but raptly attentive audience while producing nothing of value in the process I could imagine.

Of course, that's humans for you, the evolutionary pressures of tracking social drama for surviving the ancestral environment makes it so we fucking LOVE following popular train wrecks.

Sounds like the streamers and their watchers really deserve each other.

Personally, I have never really gotten watching other people play video games. I can certainly believe that people, despite having literally an internet full of all sorts of porn at their fingertips, nevertheless prefer hot women streaming video games. I can also see a race-to-the-bottom dynamic happening where the best point to make money ends up being just shy of violating the content policy of your platform.

I think that the starting point of sex work is debatable. It is well known that people on TV are on average hotter than the general population. In the broadest sense, this could already be called sex work -- of you got a job reading the news because you are a nine rather than a five, then part of your job is just looking hot, and there is a continuous path from that into softcore and eventually hardcore porn. If you are streaming while wearing makeup and elaborate sexy clothes, then you are already accepting that part of your appeal is that guys will be aroused by your videos.

Presumably, a large part of your income will not be from the people who watch one or two videos of you gaming, but from the small minority which develops an unhealthy parasocial relationship with you. By not having a paywalled explicit channel, you are likely leaving most of the monetarization opportunities on the table. So getting an explicit account where you sell videos of your feet or tits likely has a big payoff.

Sounds like the streamers and their watchers really deserve each other.

Its fair to say that's almost a symbiotic relationship. It just seems obvious that they'd all be a bit better off/happier in a different equilibrium.

There are in fact 'non-toxic' streamers and communities out there, of course!

Its just more common than not that once streamers 'get big' its a ticking clock on when they get outed as either terrible people or they have their big obvious 'sell out' moment.

Getting outed as a terrible person might not even hurt their popularity (I'm thinking of Dr. Disrespect, but there's a lot of them).

I can certainly believe that people, despite having literally an internet full of all sorts of porn at their fingertips, nevertheless prefer hot women streaming video games.

There definitely seems to be a factor where a lot of normies are wired up to perceive themselves as part of a community and having a 'friendship' of sorts with livestreamers, since at least they can 'interact' (using that term pretty damn lightly) with that person and see their impact on the streamer's show.

If you are streaming while wearing makeup and elaborate sexy clothes, then you are already accepting that part of your appeal is that guys will be aroused by your videos.

Yep.

By not having a paywalled explicit channel, you are likely leaving most of the monetarization opportunities on the table. So getting an explicit account where you sell videos of your feet or tits likely has a big payoff.

YEP. I've noticed this is a path that some streamers have taken. Creating actual content is HARD. So a women might get popular for being good at a game, or she's pretty but stays very modest. But how to keep interest in your channel going? See my point about the zero-sum attention economy.

But over time if the popularity starts to taper (or she just wants more money) she'll follow the incentive gradient to risque cosplays, to bikini/pool streams, to lewd but not explicit content, then there's the decent shot she goes from there to straight up porn (and, who knows, maybe escorting behind the scenes). And every step of the way generally being coy and plausibly deniable ("just getting more confident in my body, guis!").

World's oldest profession, after all. Of course when I say "incentive gradient" I mostly mean her overly invested fans who, if they feel like they don't have a shot at dating her, will probably be satisfied just getting to see her naked eventually.

I looked for the biggest streamers on twitch and they seem to be almost all male. Pokimane is 13th biggest, Amouranth is 34th which surprised me. I think they're the only 2 women in the top 50, eyeballing it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-followed_Twitch_channels

I think that since the females are creating the drama non-twitch viewers hear about, we're getting an inaccurate view of the platform. I don't really use twitch and certainly don't use it like the normal twitch user. I doubt many here use twitch that much either except in niche usecases. It seems to be overwhelmingly dudes playing games.

I think they're the only 2 women in the top 50

There's also #25 AriGameplays, #29 Rivers_gg

Well, Amouranth specifically moved to competing site Kick in exchange for a bunch of money. Looks like she only recently returned.

And not for nothing, Kick's whole value proposition vs. Twitch is that its more lenient with the content it allows, since they are trying to drive traffic to gambling sites.

Comparing streamer popularity by follower count is a misleading metric. Several of these accounts amassed millions of followers because they were already popular on another platform, like YouTube, and the people who watched them there would create Twitch accounts just to "follow" them. This explains how someone like Myth, the twentieth most followed account, has only a fraction of viewers on his livestream compared to streamers with far less followers. Others accumulated a large amount of followers when they very popular for a relatively brief amount of time and now have fallen off, so to speak.

I'll give a concrete example. Ninja is #2 on that list, with 19 million followers. The streamer I'll compare him to, Emiru, has 1.8 million. However, when you look at how many views their recent broadcasts have received (Emiru, Ninja), you'll see that Emiru far outpaces him:

Emiru (excluding today's and the two broadcasts that were under 10 minutes): 683K, 218K, 318K, 402K, 426K.

Ninja (excluding the non-gaming stream: 121K, 93.1K, 154K, 88.7K, 117K.

Same with the streamer I linked to in my original comment, ExtraEmily. She routinely pulls 15,000 to 20,000 concurrent viewers, which I'd estimate puts her near the very top of streamers in North America, despite having less than a million followers.

OK, sure. But if I go here (The Highest Peak Viewership Twitch Streamers for this month), it still looks like a total gamer sausage-fest. https://www.twitchmetrics.net/channels/peak

Or here, I see Emiru. She's got 25th most views this month. There's another woman at number 43, extraEmily that you mention and eyeballing it, that's it for women. The rest are all men. https://www.twitchmetrics.net/channels/viewership

There are some huge female youtubers few adults have ever heard of: Anastasia Radzinskaya and Kids Diana Show. They're children and do songs for kids, hit em with the autoplay algoroithm, get hundreds of millions of views. Besides them and some musicians youtube is pretty barren of women.

Twitch is like youtube, chess, sport, business, science, maths, war, standup comedy and much else besides, top talent is male.

You're not wrong. I want to argue that viewership by hour is not a good metric because because men usually, from my experience, stream about 1.5 as often as women do in a similar period. Or peak viewership is kinda just decided by twitch itself based on who they put on the front page (and people covering e-sports are going to get that over women who just simply don't cover e-sports). And who knows what the real numbers of any of this are because of how botted everything probably is.

But then there's the twitch payout leaks and they're pretty much the same thing as those lists. 99% men. But "top talent" is pretty reaching, it's just internet ratings, or are we prepared to say that television's top talent is Shonda Rhimes?

I suspect its similar to the amount of people that want to play a male vs female character in a videogame when they have the choice, apparently the vast majority pick male every time. Men are probably the largest demo here and prefer to play as a man and watch men. I remember hearing Northernlion say a few months back that 3% of his viewing audience is female on Youtube.

Though, I don't think it's that hard to have a good number of women to follow on either platform though like I said before they put out less content and also drop out way more often whether retiring, maternity leave, or simply stopping streams apropos of nothing. It's kinda like how women have three set matches and men have five in tennis. If women's matches were five sets then there'd be like five women in the world who would be capable of competing. I have exactly two women I follow who consistently put out content and aren't going offline for weeks or months at a time for maternity, vacations, or mental/physical health breaks or just in general being flaky. And I'm not saying that it'd be better if they did because women are generally better at communicating with the audience and you don't get the summit1g playing a game for 20 minutes of complete silence then dying and saying "aw damn" and going back into the queue in complete silence but maybe you would if they tried as hard as guys do.

EDIT: To give a more concrete example of why I think numbers are botted look at Rifftrax and MST3K in the leaked numbers. For as long as I can remember MST3K had at least 100 more viewers than Rifftrax averaging around 600-700 whereas Rifftrax had 400-500. When the latest MST3K kickstarter happened the numbers went up to 1000 and stayed that way for like six months before dropping back to 600 until this year when they finally dropped below Rifftrax and now the numbers are about the same for Rifftrax and MST3K has about half that. The payout numbers make it seem like Rifftrax is 5x more popular than MST3K and as someone that switches between the channels it's easy to notice that Rifftrax's chat is about 5x faster/more populated than MST3K's and has been even when it had double the amount of viewers.

I don't even think it was nefarious on the channel's part I think someone just wanted to support MST3K by paying for bot viewers. I also wouldn't be surprised if people were paying for bot viewers on Rifftrax as well but it's just been more consistently the same. It's hard to find an apples to apples comparison for what viewers are willing to pay so it'd be hard to make a similar comparison to other types of channels but this is probably as close as you'd get.

I can’t remember the last time I saw an “indie vtuber” who didn’t have an OF or a Patreon where she sells audio porn, it seems to be a requirement.

By indie vtuber, you mean the ones who aren't with hololive or phaseconnect or whatever? Because the big vtubers are pretty tame.

I watched two and neither are sexual at all, though naturally they get huge amounts of pornographic fan art made of them anyway. World away from amouranth and co.

Indie meaning non-hololive yeah. Just random women with their own channels.

There is massive latent demand for sex in the economy. Twitch generates about $2 billion in gross revenue annually. OnlyFans generates about $6 billion. It's just a better buisiness model if you are a young woman streamer to be titillating.

There is massive latent demand for sex in the economy.

Yeah, imagine all the sex people are having with each other for free. It's definitely an inefficient system, a massive untapped market that is worth billions or even trillions if you can achieve perfect price discrimination.

There is massive latent demand for sex in the economy.

Fixed it.

Microsoft used to sell a very geeky product that was basically a camera on a pendant. It took a photo every 5 minutes to create a ‘life diary’. I quite liked the idea and it would be cool to have an updated product that could function similarly - at the moment so much of life just disappears into the fog.( What were you doing three days ago? How much do you remember?)

Obviously uploading these images to social media is where the trouble comes in IMO. It would also need a ‘do not record’ for private matters.

Stills at a rate of one per five minutes is much less of a privacy nightmare. I mean, you probably should not wear them for most jobs, but recording full video with sound is much more likely to catch material which will go viral.

The ad felt like this to me: "you know how if you get embarrassed at a party, everyone will know? We can make sure you stay embarrassed forever, we have the technology!". I guess I'm not the target demographic.

Apropos of nothing, what's the legality of carrying IR jammers around at all times and blasting the cameras of people filming you with lasers?

Hah! If you don't damage property or health I don't see why it would be illegal. I'm in. Where's the kickstarter?

I would expect some government intervention, they'd want you to ensure it only works on glassholes and doesn't affect security cameras somehow. Because otherwise it's just a free crime app.

If you damaged their property or health, and I was on the jury, I would be much inclined to acquit.

The law in most of the West (maybe world) says that you can effectively record strangers in public without permission with a few exceptions. If this becomes popular enough it'll eventually change to require the filming party to have a large or obvious camera / filming apparatus. It only doesn't bother people because it's uncommon.

In a way, it's similar to the shelved 'search for anyone with a picture of their face' Facebook feature that Mark never released because they knew governments would destroy them for it; that's been possible for 5+ years now but the consequences are so obvious to Meta that there's no point in releasing it.

The law in most of the West (maybe world) says that you can effectively record strangers in public without permission with a few exceptions.

Is this true in the EU? I'm not the most aware of it's specific laws, but it seems like something GDPR and friends might frown upon. The EU is a non-trivial part of "The West", although I know the UK likes it's CCTV.

Probably EU countries have their own individual laws on this. I know that outside the EU, in Switzerland, you are allowed to record in public, but not allowed to publish photos or videos of people without their consent at all.

(This is interpreted as recordings where a person is the focus of the image, so if you take a picture of your friend at tourist spot and there happen to be some random people visible in the background, that's still okay.)

That means live streaming in public is essentially illegal in Switzerland, as is the popular genre of Youtube influencers harassing people in public to get a rise out of them, including those obnoxious 1st amendment “auditors” that are intentionally annoying people.

I actually really like the idea of camera glasses that are always on, so I can capture cool moments that I see. Because too often I try to fish out my phone and it's already over. I actually got the snapchat snaptacles (which were almost exactly the same concept) back in the day but they were absolutely garbage to use.

The problem right now actually isn't cultural, but tech. Think of the amount of battery life a gopro gets - latest models get 2-3 hours recording at 1080p, and the unit is quite bulky. There's also the issue of overheating which is sometimes a complaint for gopros. Now try to cram all that into a tiny wearable that you plan on wearing for all waking hours.

It's just not possible to make camera glasses that people actually want to use.

The problem right now actually isn't cultural, but tech

The problem is absolutely cultural, in that I for one would fight hard to ban anyone from having a device which automatically records people like this one.

is it just the discrete/covert nature of the device that bothers you? because 90ish percent of people on the street already have a HD camcorder in their pocket at all times.

People are becoming more and more aware that using these cameras to record any manner of material can result in either financial gain and or positive notoriety. There is clearly a market for these always on recording devices and i just wonder why the nanny state needs to get involved on this one.

I understand defending these things is an existential concern for you Wave_Existence, but come on, this is the nanny state? The fourth amendment does still exist right?

Not a lawyer of course, but invoking the constitution in a situation where people could absolutely use this equipment legally seems insane to me. When the government demands i dont do something that is currently legal because it makes you feel a little uncomfortable, yeah thats pretty close to when i would start calling it a nanny state.

existential concern

i hope you haven't wasted any mental bandwidth forming an opinion of me, i certainly haven't of you.

Lmao so cutting! And so ironic. The product is called waves, your name is Wave_Existence. Ease your mind, that was the extent of the mental bandwidth I expended on you.

Was it the nanny state when the government updated its laws about child pornography distribution in response to the development of p2p technology? When is it sane to invoke the constitution in your eyes, if not when there is a question about the potential legality of an action or technology?

I was using it colloquially to refer to the right to privacy, sorry for confusing you. But do you have any reason - at all - to assume the government won't use privately made recordings like they have tried to with ring cameras and bodycam footage?

It doesn't make me feel a little uncomfortable, it infringes upon a principle I grew up with and will fight for no matter how sisyphean the task. You might live such a tame and banal life you have no need for a general expectation of privacy in your private life, but I do not.

The product is called waves

I didn't pay attention to that. shit i regret my jump straight to bitchy comebacks, i thought you were implying i was a big fan of recording people. Sorry for that.

That said, I still don't see how this, used in public, is an infringement upon your right to privacy as the current US legal structure exists. The problem, and what makes your privacy tangibly less whole, is the panoptic media aggregation and distribution services like Facebook Tiktok Youtube Twitch etc, those are what we should be up in arms over. Not a guy with a tiny camera strapped to his face.

The government using info they shouldnt have via parallell construction or similar is a different issue, but trust that i'm no fan of it. I just see these glasses as a small, nearly insignificant advancement that in no way changes the dire underlying situation with personal information rights.

There's a reason that I specifically excluded visual-light cameras from my display glasses project. Camera glasses have been around for a while, and you can buy them much cheaper than this (cw: anti-endorsed). We mostly just kitbashed the 'must play shutter sound' rule onto cell phone cameras and pretended it was okay, and maybe Google could have gotten away with normalizing this sorta thing culturally back in 2012 with the Glass, but today?

Forget the metaphors about concealed carry; in the modern world, this is more like having a gun pointed at whoever you're looking at, and everybody with two braincells to rub together knows it. There's a degree this is a pity -- you can imagine legitimate use cases, like exomemory or live translation of text or lipreading for captioning or yada yada, and it's bad that all of those options are getting buried because of the one-in-a-thousand asshole.

The bigger question's going to be whether, even if this never becomes socially acceptable, it'll be possible to meaningfully restrict. You can put a norm out to punch anyone who wears these things, but it's only going to get harder and harder to spot them as the tech gets better. The parts are highly specialized, but it's a commodity item in a field whose major manufacturers can't prevent ghost shifts from touching their much-more-central IP. The sales are on Amazon, and while I can imagine them being restricted more than, say, the cables that will light your house on fire, that just ends up with them on eBay. Punishing people who've used them poorly, or gotten caught, has a lot more poetry to it... and also sates no one's concerns.

The bigger question's going to be whether, even if this never becomes socially acceptable, it'll be possible to meaningfully restrict. You can put a norm out to punch anyone who wears these things, but it's only going to get harder and harder to spot them as the tech gets better.

That's a legal problem. Here in Russia, possessing a recording device that is not immediately obvious as a recording device is a crime. If you order them from AliExpress, the customs will let the cops know.

you can buy them much cheaper than this (cw: anti-endorsed).

Guarantee those specs are totally fake. You're just buying an the guts of an absolute dogshit chinese dash camera crammed into the shell vaguely in the shape of glasses.

Google glass was tried like a decade ago. This is just that, incognito, with less features, right?

To me it seems kinda lame, and POV video sucks.