Pickle Smells Like a Cult

Monday, 5 January 2026

Pickle CEO Daniel Park posted on Twitter/X, attempting to rebut the analysis from Matthew Dowd I linked to over the weekend pointing out the ways that Pickle’s AR glasses, for which they’re accepting $800 pre-orders, looks like a scam. Park’s rebuttal, in my opinion, boils down to (a) a bunch of handwaving about Pickle conveniently not being able to explain their own hardware because of NDAs, and (b) this claim:

Pickle 1 is not a standalone camera glasses product. It is a phone-tethered personal intelligence interface.

Pickle’s website FAQ, on launch, claimed:

Do I need a smartphone to use Pickle 1?
Pickle 1 is a standalone device but pairs with the Pickle OS app on iOS and Android for initial setup, data management, and granular privacy controls.

As of today, that FAQ now reads:

Do I need a smartphone to use Pickle 1?
Pickle 1 is not a standalone camera glasses product. it is a phone-tethered personal intelligence interface.

Which to me already nullifies the entire premise of the fantasy device they showed at launch. Park also claims, in his post today, “Pickle 1 leverages the smartphone that users already carry”, but that can’t be true if the user carries an iPhone because there’s no way Pickle can run tethering software in the background on iOS. I do not believe it’ll do even 1/100th of what they claim when paired to an Android phone, either. But it’s literally impossible with an iPhone.

Anyway, the thing that really caught my eye in Park’s post today was this, near the beginning:

We’re a team that lives together in a house in Hillsborough, California, and works on this 7 days a week. Our team is small but we work all day, every day together and it’s helping us make progress we’re very excited and proud of.

Pickle doesn’t sound a little like a cult. It sounds exactly like a cult.

Impossible claims. A compound where “employees” live and work seven days a week. Spiritual mumbo jumbo (Pickle 1 is described as a “Soul Computer” and claims to provide “an intelligence that sees with you, remembers your life, and learns to understand you. A new soul.”) Excuses for why they cannot provide evidence for any of their fantastical claims. The only way Pickle could sound more like a cult would be if their “employees” (are any of them actually getting paid?) all shaved their heads and wore Hare Krishna-style robes.

If you work there, be wary of the Kool-Aid.