Robots Taking Over

I’m the guy who freaks out during TV mascara commercials. “What if that filthy brush punctures your eyeball? You will get eyeball gangrene and die in agony!”

Until today, I was unaware of eyelash extensions, an even-more-dangerous “beauty” treatment. For the past eight years, Ashley Davis has spent about $150 every two weeks adding volume and length to her eyelashes with extensions. The procedure takes about 90 minutes. Call me cheap, but are gorgeous lashes worth $4 K per year plus tips? Could that 40 hours per year be put to better use?

A couple of weeks ago, instead of chatting with her usual eyelash technician, Davis fell asleep while a robot named Kate did the work. It cost her just $90. While one tweezer appendage isolates the natural eyelash, another picks up an extension, dips it in adhesive and lays it over the natural eyelash. Why not trust a machine operating sharp tweezers millimeters away from your taped-open eyeball? Wasn’t that the scariest part in “A Clockwork Orange”?

By the way, the salon has three robots: named Farrah, Jacklyn and Kate. We old-timers fondly remember the original “Charlie’s Angels”

Ashley was happy with the experience. “The robot was super gentle, it felt like feathers.” Ashley, being a card-carrying member of Generation Z , recorded the entire procedure and posted it on Tik-Tok. No doubt, someone at Tik Tok HQ in Beijing got a charge out of it. “Another sign that the West is decrepit!”

Will human eyelash artists be replaced by robots? During the pandemic, the number of certified eyelash artists increased by 25 percent. Hoarding toilet paper gets old after a while. Why not “make big money” by learning how to extend eyelashes? Alas, the manufacturer has data showing that human lash artists are less precise than his robots and clients end up with glue in their eyes. “Precision and repetition are the things that robots are best at.”

No robot is getting next to my eyeballs.

By Ed Dufton