Move over, pervert glasses – the latest toxic trend is robogroping
The Guardian · L · trust 40/100
This photo provided by police in Cologne, Germany, shows a robot that was seized as evidence, on 11 October. Photograph: Polizei Koeln/Cologne Police/AP View image in fullscreen This photo provided by police in Cologne, Germany, shows a robot that was seized as evidence, on 11 October. Photograph: Polizei Koeln/Cologne Police/AP The Week in Patriarchy Robots Move over, pervert glasses – the latest toxic trend is robogroping Arwa Mahdawi Whenever a new technology is created, it will, without exception, immediately be used to harass girls and women
Y ou may be familiar with rule 34 of the internet, which states that if something exists or can be imagined, there will almost certainly be online porn of it. Now let me introduce my rule 35: whenever a new technology is created, it will, without exception, immediately be used to harass girls and women.
See, for example, Meta’s “ pervert glasses ”. As anyone could have foreseen, putting a tiny camera and microphone into smartglasses would immediately lead to people using them to record and harass women. Lo and behold, that is exactly what happened. So-called manfluencers have filmed themselves trying to flirt with women in public spaces and then uploaded the footage to TikTok. The women in these videos are often not aware they’ve been recorded until their identities are shared online and they are harassed by strangers. And what’s Meta doing about this? It’s instituted a few bans and made some privacy updates, but doesn’t seem to have an appetite to properly solve the problem. Indeed, at the Meta Connect 2026 keynote, Mark Zuckerberg did not feel the need to apologize to the women whose lives have been upended by his technology.
Then there is the Flock license plate tracking system, which has been abused by an extraordinary number of law enforcement officers to track the locations of their exes or other women they are sexually interested in. And, of course, there are the AI image generators, which have been used to create deepfake pornography of women and girls. According to a 2023 report , “deepfake pornography made up 98 per cent of all deepfake videos online, and 99 per cent depicted women”.
Now, there’s a new toxic tech trend to worry about: livestreamed robogroping. Police in Cologne, Germany, are currently investigating an incident in which a humanoid robot controlled by two teenage males touched a 16-year-old girl’s buttocks and made sexually suggestive gestures toward her. Footage of the groping robot, which was wearing human clothes and a fake mustache, was reportedly livestreamed by the two males online.
The robot in question has now been confiscated by the local police, who seem a little befuddled by the whole thing. “We have not been aware of this phenomenon so far,” a police spokesperson told the Associated Press, adding it was “new territory for us”.
It may be new territory but I can guarantee you that this won’t be the last time we hear about an incident like this. Getting your hands on an AI-powered humanoid robot is still a lot more expensive than buying a pair of smartglasses, but the technology is rapidly becoming a lot more accessible. Earlier this year, a school in New York made headlines after announcing its new teaching assistant would be a humanoid robot called Sally, made by a company that makes realistic sex dolls. Outrage over the announcement forced the school district to halt its plans , but it’s only a matter of time before we see humanoid robots in schools. Indeed, in a report published last year, Bank of America predicted that, as costs go down, we will see mass adoption of humanoid robots from 2035 onwards. By 2060, they expect there to be 3bn humanoid robots, which will replace 20% of the workforce in the industrial sector and 50% of the workforce in the service sector.
As the industry develops, expect corporations to ensure that their profit-maximizing robots have more legal protections than the humans they may harm. This week in Philadelphia, for example, a woman was arrested after allegedly blocking the path of one of the annoying Uber delivery robots that are now ubiquitous in the city. (The fact the police intervened is absolutely wild to me as a Philadelphia resident, considering they rarely seem interested in doing their jobs.) A growing body of case law has found that police officers are not under any legal obligation to protect citizens who are not in their custody. Yet they seem surprisingly keen on protecting robots.
Our brave new world, everyone! I’m afraid pervert glasses are just a small glimpse of what’s to come. By 2060, robogroping may be as commonplace as catcalling is today.
Braden Eric Peters, who goes by the nom-de-influencer Clavicular, shot to fame for smashing his face with a hammer in order to beautify himself. Bonesmashing, as it’s called, is part of a toxic trend called looksmaxxing , which involves people (largely young men) going to extremes to increase their “sexual market value”. When not bonesmashing, Peters gets into regular trouble with the law. Most lately, he was charged with rape and drug offenses in Massachusetts last month; his attorneys have denied the allegations. Nevertheless, it seems that there are people out there willing to pay $7,500 for a week at Camp Looksmax, a new venture in which Peters coaches attendees on confidence and dating.
“If more women put the same energy into their marriages and into finding a spouse that they do into their careers, you would see society have a lot more babies because, ultimately, that’s what led to the downfall of Rome – when women stopped having babies, and you started putting energy elsewhere,” Stephen Miller’s influential wife said on Fox News this week . Someone buy the Millers a history book please.
Smith, 25, and her husband, 28, have four kids called Slim Easy, Rumble Honey, Whimsy Lou and Fawnie Golden. Speaking on the Aspire podcast recently, Smith said she didn’t think she could handle having another kid. Sounds…
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