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After Coldplaygate, the world of moral lynchings
Let’s settle on the private lapses of a couple rash and stupid enough to think what happens in public stays private. But you have to ask about priorities.
Are we done with our thin-lipped moralising over what some are calling Coldplaygate? You do know what I’m talking about, the video of the man and woman, he’s got her in a tight cinch at the Coldplay concert in Boston? As the camera zooms in, voila, they’re on the giant screen and it’s their reaction, instinctive and visceral that makes the moment viral. He ducks, she covers her face. Uh-oh! Busted. Lead singer Chris Martin catches on: “Either they’re having an affair or they’re just very shy.” In no time at all they’ve been outed as Andy Byron, the married CEO of tech start-up Astronomer, and Kristin Cabot, the company’s HR manager, also married, just not to him.
It’s Armageddon on the internet. Memes, jokes, OMGs, instant wisdom, and a near universal finger-wagging. Within days Byron puts in his papers, reportedly Cabot follows later, but the tut-tutting continues. On Etsy, “I took my sidepiece to the Coldplay concert” T-shirts go on sale. Leave aside the sexism of “sidepiece”, a country that has only months ago elected a legally defined sexual predator is now expressing horror at the moral lapse. Who would have thought? As the mainstream media examines Donald Trump’s relationship with convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, its readers are working themselves up into a frenzy over a kiss-cam in flagrante.
It’s almost like justice by proxy. Can’t get the big guys in office? Let’s settle on the private lapses of a couple rash and stupid enough to think what happens in public stays private. But you have to ask about priorities. In a world where desperately hungry people in Gaza are being killed by the Israeli military while seeking aid — all of it under the glare of social media — the public excoriation of a cheating couple seems grotesquely misplaced.
What accounts for this prurient interest? Some 122 million viewers have seen the original video, according to Business Insider. Partly it’s the nature of all cheating scandals from Prince Charles’s leaked phone call to his then mistress that he wanted to be reborn as her tampon to Tiger Woods’s serial cheating that led to the end of his marriage. Partly, it’s a growing distrust of and distaste for millionaire tech bosses who preach one standard for their employees while they practise quite another for themselves, all the while drawing obscene salaries and bonuses. And, partly, it’s the nature of social media. Moments that go viral tend to be unscripted and raw, as this one is. The two might have been cheating but their reaction at being caught is, ironically, honest and real.
But what is the cost? It’s not just the loss of a job, public humiliation and collateral damage to families. It’s knowing these few seconds will follow them like an indelible scarlet letter for as long as that clip exists (forever).
I’m not justifying the affair. That is entirely for them and their partners to sort out. And to be sure, there are legitimate ethical concerns about the power differential of an office romance between the big boss and his subordinate. In a post MeToo world, surely Cabot as HR head would have read out the riot act to handsy employees and surely Byron as CEO would have known the consequences of an inhouse affair.
A 2022 YouGuv survey found 54% of Americans in monogamous relationships said they had been cheated on. “Is America experiencing an infidelity epidemic?” asked a February 2025 newsletter of the Survey Center of American Life. The answer is self-evident which is what makes the public lynching seem hypocritical, to use a mild word.
Namita Bhandare writes on gender. The views expressed are personal.
