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Behold the Platonic Ideal of the Glasshole

Welcome to the creep-future, where Glass lets you pick up women by Facebook-stalking them in real time.

The Atlantic's Alexis Madrigal calls it "probably the most cringe-inducing augmented reality concept video I've seen yet." And for good reason: Infinity AR's fantasy world is Glassholism taken to its sad apex.

For the uninitiated: design firms and tech companies whip up these augmented reality concept videos to demonstrate the possible futures they see approaching (and to sell their consulting services and/or software). The best ones plausibly visualize—or satirize—the technological possibility of the emergent medium. The worst of them do pretty much what you see above—condense all of the most noxious trends in personal tech into a misogynistic, status-obsessed introvert's wet dream.

In its own words, Infinity AR, the company behind the video, "provides the revolutionary software platform that makes the digital eyewear experience (i.e. Meta, Google Glass) a reality." Their CEO has been bullish on Glass, and clearly wants a piece of the AR market. Apparently, so he can hop in his Ferrari and have his eyewear tell him how to pick up women and win at pool. Yes, Infinity is selling its platform by promising men a world where they can Facebook-stalk women in real time, monitor their level of interest with an algorithm, and ultimately impress them by knowing what their astrological sign is.

I'm not a Glass-hater per se; it's an interesting technology that should be experimented with. But enough people clearly exult Glass in a way typified by this concept video—which aspires to out-Glasshole Glass in buffoonish creepery—that of course some people recoil at the site of a pair of them. It's already clear that Glass is a luxury product for the early adopter set—even if the fact has been obscured a bit by the gauze of techno-futurism the company wraps it in. But here its worst potentialities are laid bare: Infinity AR imagines its augmented reality as an adolescent fever dream.

Augmented reality will make you look cool, it will let you drive cool cars, it will let you win at cool games like pool, and it will tell you how to successfully seduce women. It's the manifest fantasy of the frustrated, uncool male id as seen through future goggles. It's as if you're downloading The Game directly into your brain in real time.

It's repulsive. And yet, simultaneously informative—as an intimate glimpse into precisely how thousands of aspiring Tech Titans imagine their lives will look through the veneer of the latest technology.