They’re issuing a moratorium on glass-holes.
Uber-exclusive New York nightclub Basement — a subterranean Berlin-inspired techno mecca in Maspeth, Queens — has become notorious for denying visitors who fail its mysterious “vibe check,” among other strict vetting processes.
Now, they’re placing another type of ubiquitous club-goer on the blacklist– revelers wearing smart glasses.
“Anyone bringing smart glasses into the venue, whether wearing them or carrying them in a bag, will be asked to leave and may be permanently banned,” the techno hotspot announced in a Thursday Instagram post.
“Our no photo/no video policy exists to protect the privacy, safety and freedom of everyone on our dance floor. Devices that allow discreet recording are incompatible with that policy.”
The Post reached out to Basement for comment regarding the policy, which sheds light on just how controversial the tech has become.
Smart glasses come equipped with smartphone-like hardware that allows them to record POV video and photos, among other functions.
As this tech is often hard to spot, smart glasses wearers can deploy them fairly inconspicuously, raising concerns that they can be used to film people without their consent.
Instagram viewers seemed to be overwhelmingly on board with the ban on these tech specs.
“Keep the dance floor private, present, and phone-free,” declared one commenter.
“Introduce a magnetization policy,” suggested another. “Just scan people’s glasses with a magnet at their own risk lol.”
“Every venue should have this policy. Including Chili’s,” wrote a third.
“What type of NERD goes to the club wearing this?” scoffed one, decrying the optics. “Now I get the need of your tight door policy. The lame crowd is in.”
“We as a society need to stop normalizing the surveillance state,” exclaimed one commenter, while another referred to them as “pervert classes” in reference to the trend of creeps using them to record people without them noticing.
This past Spring, technologically inclined gawkers went viral after using Meta’s “smart glasses” to film themselves harassing women and upload the videos to TikTok and Instagram, where they garner millions of views.
Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri became so fed up with the sordid trend that he banned the content outright.
“If you’re posting content that is taking advantage of people and harassing them, like a lot of these pickup line kind of videos that we’ve heard of and seen, then we’re going to take the content down,” the big-wig said in response to a question on his Instagram stories last week.
“We don’t want people to be surreptitiously taking videos of other people and harassing them and then posting them on our platform. So we’re trying to fight that every way we can.”
Meta, which recently released the cutting-edge Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses for $799, announced several measures to help curb the gadgets’ capacity for perving.
These included disabling the camera for users who try and hide the blinking LED light that denotes when they’re recording
This week, they were also granted a patent for a kill switch that can torpedo “one or more sensors” should they be used in an unsavory manner.
