By Sophie Tanno, Ivana Scatola, CNN
(CNN) — Toluwa was waiting for her flight in an airport lounge in Washington, DC, when she said she was approached by a stranger.
The pair got chatting and, after a while, she agreed to exchange numbers with him. It wasn’t until she got home and searched his social media that she discovered he had posted numerous videos of himself trying to pick up women in airports.
These videos were taken using a built-in camera on his glasses – smart glasses, which look like regular eyewear and, while still relatively niche, are growing in popularity.
“I creeped, I found his TikTok. I found out that he does these ‘rizz’ videos,” Toluwa said, using a popular slang term derived from “charisma” for social media videos showing men approaching women in public and chatting them up. Toluwa wished to be identified by her first name only for privacy reasons.
While in contact over text, Toluwa said the man sent her the footage he had filmed of her without her knowledge, saying he wanted to “run it past” her before he shared it online.
She said he tried to persuade her to consent to him doing so; however, despite her not explicitly agreeing to, he uploaded it on social media. “It blows up and to the point where people are sending me this video, someone came up to me in Union Market, which is a large space in DC, and shoved it in my face and was like, is this you?”
Social media is awash with videos of men filming themselves approaching women in public spaces and attempting to flirt with them or ask for their numbers. In many cases, the videos are filmed and uploaded to platforms like TikTok and Instagram without the permission or knowledge of the person being filmed.
These videos, often filmed from the point of view of the man approaching a potential subject, rack up thousands and, in some case, millions of views. Once posted, they can attract misogynistic comments.
While the concept of the pick-up artist is nothing new, experts are sounding the alarm over the rise of so-called “manfluencers” who are covertly filming women to create misogynistic content online.
‘Controlling women’s images’
The term “manfluencer” describes a broad group of social media figures who create content geared toward men. While some post harmless content such as gym routines and self-improvement advice, other accounts are more sinister.
In this online sphere, women are often positioned “as a conquest, prize or reward,” Stephanie Wescott, a feminist academic, writer and speaker, and a lecturer in Education, Culture and Society at Australia’s Monash University, told CNN.
Smart glasses can play into the hands of these content creators as they offer a clear message about power, she warned. Namely, that men can “be watching, recording and therefore controlling women’s images in public spaces without their knowledge and therefore, that the public spaces belong to men.”
For Wescott, the phenomenon represents another example of the gendered abuse of technology – and a danger for women that is difficult to anticipate. “The danger is the loss of bodily autonomy without even being aware that it is happening,” s