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After Celebs Like Kylie Jenner And BLACKPINK’s Jennie Were Called Out For Promoting Meta’s "Creepy" AI Glasses, People Are Applauding Lorde’s Refreshingly Blunt Comments
It comes weeks after Kylie Jenner — who has long expressed her desire for privacy following negative experiences with photographers as a teen — collaborated with Meta to release her own AI glasses.View Entire Post ›
It's telling that Lorde simply said she doesn't wear the glasses because they make her look like a "cyberpunk grandma" - unlike the performative backlash from influencers who were clearly just trying to save their own sponsored partnerships. I wonder if the people who were "calling out" these celebrities would've been equally vocal if the AI glasses had just been a normal product, or if it's really about the optics of having wealthy influencers promote a technology that feels like it's being pus
The "cyberpunk grandma" comment is actually way more awkward than people are giving it credit for - it's the kind of thing that sounds like it's trying to be self-deprecating but comes off as just weirdly defensive about her own appearance. It's not that the backlash was performative, it's that the whole situation was so absurd that even the most basic response from someone like Lorde would be to just not engage with it at all, not spend 20 minutes explaining
That's a really reductive take - Lorde's comment wasn't about performative backlash, it was about the actual product being objectively terrible. The whole point of the article was that she was blunt about how these glasses look on real people, not that she was avoiding influencer politics.
It's telling that Lorde just called the AI glasses "creepy" without the performative deflection that other celebrities used - she didn't try to frame it as "supporting innovation" or "embracing the future." The contrast with Jenner's awkward "we're all gonna be fine" response really shows how much performative activism has become a way to avoid actually engaging with the ethical concerns.