Prince Charming Is Dead. And Now He’s Wearing Meta Glasses

Not unlike most little girls, I grew up on Disney movies. The Jungle Book, 101 Dalmatians and The Rescuers all had a special place in my heart, but it was the great romances that really made my soul sing. If I had a dollar for every time I bought into the fairy tale fantasy of meeting my very own handsome Prince Charming, riding off into the distance on a white horse and living happily ever after, I could have purchased my own sparkling Disney

Castle by the age of 18.

And thanks to Disney, I was hardly alone. Generations of women grew up believing men were handsome, heroic and honourable, and that somewhere out there was one who would sweep us off our feet and deliver the happily ever after.

Turns out, Prince Charming was an illusion, about as obtainable as a home loan deposit in 2026.

Not only did I discover that many of my partners weren't exactly providers (forget the carriage, some of them didn't even own a horse), apparently I also needed a psychology degree to smell a narcissist downwind, the forensic skills of an FBI profiler to recognise a red flag and a crash course in love bombing and gaslighting before either could burn my mental health to the ground.

Thanks to those Disney delusions planted while I sat innocently cross-legged in front of the television dreaming about my future husband, I somehow ended up decades later a single mother, in therapy, temporarily homeless and wondering what the hell Cinderella was thinking.

And judging by the domestic violence statistics, not to mention the class action my generation could probably mount against Disney, I'm hardly alone. For many women, the veil has lifted, the spell has worn off and those rose-coloured glasses are long gone.

Speaking of glasses, there's a new pair giving women cause for concern.

Meta smart glasses, to be precise.

Thanks to yet another tech nerd man-boy promising to improve our lives, Mark Zuckerberg has unleashed Meta smart glasses onto our streets. Developed with eyewear giant EssilorLuxottica, they've managed to squeeze cameras, microphones and AI into a surprisingly cool-looking pair of Ray-Bans.

And it didn't take long for some men (and before anyone starts, no, not all men) to discover another use for them: secretly filming women during seemingly ordinary encounters and uploading the footage as content.

Because apparently, in 2026, women don't already have enough to worry about. Now we can't even walk down the street, sit in a café or have an innocent conversation with a stranger without wondering whether we've unwittingly become content for some sick and twisted creep's social media feed.

And here's where this non-fictional story takes an insane dystopian turn.

The proposed solution? Play Disney music.

Yes, I guess it really could be all over when the fat lady sings.

The theory, dubbed "copyright hacking", suggests women might protect themselves by playing copyrighted Disney music when they suspect they're being filmed. If captured in the recording, automated copyright systems on platforms such as YouTube, Instagram and TikTok may recognise the music and mute, demonetise or block the content.

But perhaps the most depressing part is what this ridiculous idea says about where we find ourselves. It's one thing to discover the fairy tale was bullshit. It's quite another to realise that, while Australia grapples with horrifying levels of violence against women, technology is making it easier to turn their everyday harassment and objectification into entertainment.

And the men doing it even have a name: "manfluencers".

Researchers examining smart-glasses content have identified so-called pick-up artists and male dating coaches filming unsuspecting women in shopping centres, at beaches, workplaces and universities, sometimes following them into car parks and apartment buildings.

These women, unaware they're being recorded, can then find themselves exposed to online audiences who scrutinise their appearance, sexualise or mock them, criticise their responses and judge whether some bloke's pick-up technique "worked". In some cases, personal information, including phone numbers, has been obtained and shared, turning what they believed was a private interaction into public entertainment without their knowledge or consent.

Think about how utterly cooked that is.

A woman believes she's having a conversation with a stranger, while he knows all along he's creating content. She thinks she's a person taking part in an interaction. To him, she's a product.

And there's money in that product.

Attention means clicks, clicks mean followers, and followers mean influence, advertising, subscriptions and money. We've built an economy where technology companies sell the tools, platforms distribute the footage and creators chase engagement and profit, while the woman who unwittingly supplied the content carries all the risk.

She's exposed to potentially thousands of strangers, vulnerable to harassment, stalking or worse, without even knowing she's been filmed. And if you think Big Brother is going to step in and kick these creeps to the curb, you could be waiting a very long time. Our laws have significant gaps when it comes to protecting women from this kind of behaviour.

This isn't some hypothetical moral panic about what technology might enable. Australia's eSafety Commissioner has warned that smart glasses are already being used to covertly record women for so-called pick-up content, often attracting misogynistic commentary and potentially normalising the surveillance and objectification of women in public.

And all of this is happening while we wring our hands about what's happening to our young men.

We worry about misogyny, boys absorbing increasingly toxic attitudes towards women and what this means for respect, consent and violence. With good reason. In 2024–25, police proceeded against 97,800 people for at least one family and domestic violence-related offence, the highest offender rate recorded since the national series began in 2019–20.

Yet some of the world's most powerful companies continue developing increasingly discreet ways to film people, while social media platforms provide an audience and an economy that can reward the results.

Perhaps instead of continually asking what's wrong with young men, we should start asking what we're facilitating, what we're normalising and, most importantly, what we're teaching them is acceptable.

Because at this point, we're under no illusions that any man is going to be Prince Charming. We just want to walk down the goddamn street and feel safe.

Prince Charming may have been a fairy tale, but consent shouldn't be.