It is raining! The sky water comes.
The guinea pigs are safely stowed. They know me well enough by now that they let me get them one in each hand. They prefer going out to coming in though, but it would be mad to leave them out overnight. Their run is very far from secure. There don’t seem to be local foxes but I wouldn’t want to tempt fate.
It’s dark outside. Half ten at night. I can hear the rain through the window now I listen for it. The first I knew about it though was Gwyn, who had come up three flights of stairs to jump on me because I’m warm and she’s soaking wet. Suddenly I had a shouting soaking idiot. This long summer even the cats have forgotten to defend themselves against the skywater.
I don’t think it’s the end of the heat yet, but it’s where we’re going. There’s still grass on the lawn here so I’m sure it’s been managing to rain here on and off for awhile.
Meanwhile in the inky world of online social media, there’s been a campaign recently to stigmatise my lovely Meta Ray Bans. This long summer they’ve really come into their own. I’m surprised it didn’t happen sooner, the backlash, but it is happening hard at the moment, and weirdly seems to be driven by bots. Because it is an American piece of tech that has had a huge pick up. The bot farms are very much not based in America. They’re pushing the phrase “Pervert Glasses”.
GoPro was founded in 2002. If you want to secretly film people that’s the monkey surely? I’ve seen people with them on their backpack straps, and I’ve only become aware cos they’ve been pushing their shoulder towards me. There’s that atrocious Mikey man cycling around London with one on his helmet. Also mobile phones have cameras these days, you know? People can film you on them and there isn’t a big light. My glasses, if I’m filming they are on my face where you will look, and there’s a great big obvious light. Phones don’t do that. Nor do go-pros. I think it’s the market trying to stigmatise the tech after so many sales. I made a comment on Facebook and got bundled. I looked into the nature of the bundle and it was pretty much entirely bots. I was about to post that well used phrase: “every accusation is a confession”. Anyone calling them pervert glasses is just telling us what they would want to do with them. But it largely wasn’t closet perverts telling me I was a pervert – it was bots with their own closed circle of likes. Someone is paying the botfarms for bad PR on them. Likely a tech rival not in the US.
They’re fucking brilliant in so many ways, I adore them and have written in the past about how I’m surprised they haven’t already had this campaign of stigma.
I’ve had them for years now. I constantly find myself having to laboriously explain how they work, what it looks like when they’re recording, how I’m never going to be doing it when I haven’t told them etc etc. I’ve just done it out of courtesy, surprised that they aren’t stigmatised and happy to share a great piece of kit. They are my sunglasses and they do so much. I’m itching to wear them abroad now they’ve sorted the live translation. There’s audio and phone as well as hands free filming.
People film shit on their phones all the time. I announce every fucking time I push the button, because I know how people can be. Most of my friends are very sensitive to such things. I’m an actor for fuck’s sake. It annoys me that one of the genuinely revolutionary pieces of wearable tech of recent years has started to pick up a manufactured backlash. It’s August so there’s nothing else for the botfarms to do so they’re doing climate change denial, flerf and Meta Ray Bans…
Well, when the rainy season comes I won’t use them so much. Although I’ve been considering getting a lensed pair.
