Coldplay’s Kiss Cam: The Life Lessons We Learned

Some social media stories just have that extra something don’t they? The ‘je ne sais pas pourquoi’ which just has us all enthralled and wanting to know all the gory details.

And the best (or worst ones depending on your point of view) have that extra layer of how they leave us feeling. Often a bit grubby, embarrassed; like we’ve been caught spying on our neighbours or rubbernecking at the victims of a car crash.

The Coldplay Kiss-Cam debacle was absolutely one of those moments. It had everything we social media vultures crave… somebody super successful blowing their life up before our very eyes (bonus points that the person was rich, white, male; we love to see them fall off their pedestal don’t we?), an extra-marital affair, public shame and embarassment, it was fodder for comedy sketches and memes-a-plenty. It was the cheating scandal between two people we’d never even heard of, which still managed to send us into a collective frenzy.

We shared the stories, we lol’d at the witty take-downs, we replayed the moment where Andy Byron literally hid like a five year old and his lover Kristin Cabot covered her face while while her girlfriends laughed like hyenas. Can you imagine? We asked. Oh it was HILARIOUS. They replied.

But was it that hilarious, in fact?  Similarly to the recent social media frenzy about Bianca Sensori (she of naked dresses and Kanye fame); on reflection, it all just felt like I say, a bit grubby. Salacious and nasty and completely ignorant of the fact that there was a humiliated wife and likely heartbroken children at the centre of this mess.

What I kept coming back to was just why anybody having an affair would be that careless. So careless that it was actually callous? Was it the fact that these were the two most powerful people from Astronomer, the CEO and the CPO of the $1.3 billion dollar company. Had their success and power just gone to their heads leaving them feeling invincible (if not invisible)?

There are lessons to be learned for all of us from this very sorry, very modern tale.

Here are my top five hot takes:

• Don’t expect empathy; regardless of which role you play in the story. Having gone through a divorce and watched numerous friends go through break-ups, new relationships, re-marriages and all the stress that can come with those things; I like to think I’m far less judgey than I once was.

  
  

• I have sympathy, if not empathy, for all parties involved in this most cringeworthy of situations. Let’s be real here. We do not know if Byron’s wife couldn’t stand him and was punching the air in glee that now she can divorce him guit-free and take him for half his pension pot, or if she was madly in love with him and is broken in all the ways it’s possible to be. We do not know if Byron and Cabot were crazy about each other, had been in loveless marriages and saw each other as a chance for true joy in this all-too-short life, or if they were just another fling driven by lust, not caring who might get hurt.

  
  

• But regardless of the fact that we, as a social collective, do not know any of the facts for sure; we have exhibited so little empathy for all parties. One in five of us has an affair guys. It could be you who was exposed. It could be your husband diving under the table out of view of the kiss cam. It could be you having to sit down and explain to your children what Daddy did.

  
  

• None of us are safe from those viral moments; they genuinely can happen to anyone. Nobody had a clue, or gave a flying crap about either of those two people pre the kiss-cam; yet within an hour TikTok was alive with re-shares and videos and two families had imploded. While you might not be silly enough to go to a Coldplay concert with your affair partner, there are other things we can take away from this. When something is out there on the internet, whether it’s your private social media platform or a drunken video your friend posts on YouTube, you unfortunately don’t have any means of controlling where that goes and how it’s used. Back in the days of newspapers and in-print magazines; us ‘normals’ were only interested in the goings-on between celebs. But social media has opened up a fascination in us for any big story, because hell, who knows, the story might be the very reason that person becomes a celeb. One minute you’re kissing your boss at a coldplay concert, the next your life is trashed… then next you’re the ‘big name’ in Celebrity Big Brother. Stranger things have happened Ms Cabot…  Post wisely my friends, and remember that real privacy is a thing of the past.

  
  

• Businesses can turn a crisis into a money spinner off the back of something like this. You only have to look at Astronomer’s incredibly savvy decision to hire Gwyneth Paltrow as their temporary spokesperson in the wake of Andy Byron’s suspension. A masterpiece in PR wizardry. Astronomer will be OK. Other big businesses will look at this experience and learn valuable lessons. They’ll implement training courses and new HR policies and future-proof their CEO’s from kiss-n-tell’s. However we can see from the immediate filings for divorce by the wife of Byron and the husband of Cabot, that families and marriages are far more vulnerable than businesses and a sticking plaster can’t be applied when the wound is too deep. When the dust settles, the businesses will be fine; buoyant even. Let’s hope the same can be said for the human beings at the epicentre.