Mark Zuckerberg says his weird tan is just a tan — not a hint about a new product.

Meta is working on a new line of high-tech AR glasses. But Zuck says that's not the reason he looks like this.

• What's up with Mark Zuckerberg's face?
• It looks like he's gotten a lot of sun. Probably too much sun. But maybe it's more than that. Maybe he's trying to tell us something?
• Nope: He's not. (Or so he says!)

When is a tan line just a tan line? And when is it something else?

This is, admittedly, not one of the most important questions facing the country at this particular moment.

But it was one I had Tuesday, when I saw a new video interview with Mark Zuckerberg. The Meta chief was talking about the newest release of Llama, his open-source AI model, which people seem excited about.

But I was much more interested in Zuckerberg's appearance, which you can see at the top of this post: He seemed as if he'd had some kind of tanning bed mishap.

I don't think Zuckerberg is a tanning bed kind of guy (though I guess it's possible it's a component of his mullet + chain + swaggy ensemble makeover he's been working on this year). But he is a guy who spends time thinking about the way people perceive him. Hence, his hydro-foiling in a tux with an American flag and a beer photo from earlier this month.

So maybe his sunburnt raccoon look was meant to mean … something?

I shared the image with some tech-savvy friends and got an immediate response from Matthew Ball, the analyst and investor: "Those are from Orion," he theorized.

Orion is Meta's internal name for a new augmented-reality device the company has been working on for some time, at great expense.

Zuckerberg has yet to fully show Orion off in public, but he's been talking the tech up recently. It seems like some kind of mashup of the company's Quest headsets and a thicker, heavier version of its popular Meta Ray-Ban sunglasses.

"It's not the most stylish thing. But it's good!" he promises.

So. Maybe Zuckerberg's tan lines were an Easter egg: Does he want us to know that he's been taking Orion out in public — or perhaps when he's out rowing?

There are lots of ways for a journalist to pose that question to Meta executives. but I figured I'd just float it out right to the top guy himself, via Threads:

The good news (for me): It worked! The bad news (for me): I don't have a scoop for you about Meta's upcoming product lineup.

Alas. No Pulitzer for this one. If I really wanted to stretch it, I could tell you that Zuckerberg was nodding at the company's plans to buy a stake in EssilorLuxottica, the company that partners with Meta to make its Ray-Bans. But that's already all but official news. Next!