And for the Kardashians, perhaps some critical thinking skills?

Some thoughts on the most morally bankrupt family in showbiz

We’ve all seen it by now. Kylie Jenner has partnered with Meta to create AI sunglasses.

The glasses, available to buy for around €400, come in a sleek and chic cat-eye shape, designed to ‘reflect Kylie’s signature style’, and buyers can choose from three different colours.

Features include:

Filming people (without their knowledge)

An AI-generated chatbot that speaks in Kylie’s voice

Meta glasses aren’t new, though. The first mainstream filming glasses were introduced in 2013 with the release of Google Glass. They quickly received negative public backlash for both the price of the glasses and the lack of public privacy they aimed to normalise.

Yet here we are, over a decade later, with our trustworthy friend Mark Zuckerberg revisiting and rebranding the idea of surveillance technology - most likely for the greater good and not for personal profit at all.

Until now, women have been the people most abused by this kind of technology. Men wear them and film them in public spaces without their knowledge or consent. Entire social media accounts with large followings are dedicated to sharing content of women as they’re hit on and harassed.

It’s similar to the abuse that someone like, say, Kylie Jenner, has experienced. As she spoke on the Therapuss with Jake Shane podcast about her experience with surveillance and harassment from paparazzi, she said that she often finds it hard to leave the house in LA.

“I don’t know how I’m a normal person. It was quite scary at times,” she admitted on the podcast.

“They (the paparazzi) wanted to make more money off a scandalous photo of me. And I was an underage girl, by herself - I didn’t have security at that time.”

Hearing Kylie’s words is so reassuring - because of course that means she would never endorse a tool to help predatory men abuse other young women and girls… right?

Apparently not when you’re 1/6 of one of the world’s most unethical families.

Please don’t be fooled into believing these glasses are 'empowering’, either. Women now also having the ability to film their predators back does not level the playing field or fix the problem; it only escalates it further. But it doesn’t take a genius to figure that one out. Yet still, Kylie and her team seem to have difficulty getting there.

Kylie didn’t have security at the height of her paparazzi harassment because she wanted to “live normally”. Luckily for her, she’s the ‘world’s youngest self-made billionaire’, making it easy for her to employ a full team of security. Not to mention, the estimated $15 million and $35 million she’s earning from the Meta Glasses campaign can be put towards protecting her safety.

The thing is, if Kylie simply used her brain, or at the very least listened back to her own words, she’d connect the lines and realise the immediate danger she’s placing young girls in. By normalising and endorsing this level of surveillance, women and girls everywhere are now subjected to the same, if not much worse, persecution she herself criticised. The only difference being these people are not billionaires who can hire security like her.

While Kylie put more greed than brain into the thinking on this one, a lot of the public thankfully possesses the ability to think critically, and the backlash came in quick and fast.

Meta somewhat preempted it, as they are well aware that there is little, if any, female audience for this product. They knew that they had to enlist someone very specific to try to convince women that predator goggles are a good idea - and who better than one of the wonderfully unscrupulous Kardasian/Jenners.

Of course, this is not the first time we’ve seen a Kardashian/Jenner land themselves in trouble for having loose morals. The family now have a reputation for unprincipled controversies that, instead of cancelling them, seem to earn them even more money.

One would think the girls would learn from their sister’s past mistakes, too. We all remember Kendall’s 2017 ad with Pepsi, where we saw her solve every possible minority’s inequality by handing a police officer a can of the carbonated drink.

I refuse to believe that not one person working on any of these projects, be it Kendall, Kylie or the wider team, lacked the logical thinking to realise that these agendas they’re accidentally pushing are murky, if not outright immoral.

It’s here that I remind you that it is impossible to be an ethical billionaire. The two words don’t belong in the same sentence. Accumulating that level of wealth is not possible without someone or something being exploited along the way.

It’s also here that I remember that even if I possessed the privilege and business skills the Kardashian/Jenners have, I would never reach their status. That email about Meta glasses would have landed in my inbox, and I would have ripped Mark a new one before declining his offer. For me, doing the right thing would always outweigh financial gain. But for the famous sisters, doing something for the greater good will never come before profit.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m far more disgusted at pathetic excuses for humans like Mark Zuckerberg and all the men using Meta glasses for abuse. I just wish that someone like Kylie could channel her moral compass and do the right thing, if not for her bank account, but for the rest of the world.

The corrupt collab makes total sense. Mark gets a soulless puppet to endorse his product and further his exploitation of the public, and Kylie cashes her cheque. It’s good for everyone - apart from the millions of women and girls who are now even less safe in public spaces than they were before.