Irishman faces backlash after being wrongly accused as man at centre of viral Coldplay clip
An Irish man has been caught up in a global viral internet scandal that saw a tech executive and his employee caught in an intimate embrace on a 'kiss cam' at a Coldplay concert.
Dublin born Andy Byron, who is happily married with two children, was left shell shocked on Thursday evening when his phone blew up while he was on holiday with his wife.
There were hundreds of messages from internet users wrongly accusing him of cheating on his spouse.
Speaking to the Sunday World this weekend, the Dublin graphic designer said: 'It all started on Thursday evening.
"I'm on annual leave at the moment and hadn't been looking at my phone much through the day when I started getting messages on some of my friends Whatsapp groups asking me if I had enjoyed the Coldplay gig.'
Astronomer CEO Andy Byron and chief people officer Kristin Cabot on camera at the concert
Today's News in 90 Seconds - July 19th
"I didn't know what the story was yet, but then one of my friends sent me the link that I'm sure everyone has seen by now.
'My name isn't particularly common, this is the first other Andy Byron I've ever heard of, so obviously I found it funny.
'When I checked my LinkedIn later I saw that I was getting weird messages from people I didn't know.
"They were saying things like 'you got caught bad' and 'you got what you deserved'. I just thought it was really bizarre that complete strangers would go online and send messages to someone like him when it had absolutely nothing to do with them? People can be so weird online.'
Byron who runs an animation and video content studio called Stylo in Dublin said 'I'm used to making things for social media'.
'So the first thing I did was put out a message to my friends on LinkedIn saying that it couldn't have been me because I would never go to a Coldplay gig. Then I decided to change my job title from Creative Director to "NOT THE GUY FROM THE COLDPLAY GIG" in order to get no more weird messages.'
That night Byron went to bed and 'didn't think too much more of it'.
But the next morning when he woke there were more people 'thinking I was the infamous Andy Byron'.
He says he even got a message from 'one woman asking if I was single'.
His wife found it 'mildly amusing at first' but 'she's looking forward to it blowing over now".
'Especially as we're on holiday with our two kids and we were trying to stay offline while we are away,' he said.
'I think what happened was the other Andy deactivated his account just as I changed my job title, so I now come up as the first result on LinkedIn. I just find it so mad that some people take it upon themselves to reach out to people in these situations to message them. I don't know what they could possibly get out of it?'
On his view of his unfortunate name sake he says: 'I feel bad for the actual people involved, especially Andy's wife and family. If this is the level of attention I'm getting, I can't imagine what it's like for them.'
Meanwhile, this weekend reports are circulating this weekend that the cuddle could cost over €40m.
The real man at the centre of the scandal is wealthy computer executive Andy Byron (50) and his human resource boss Kirstin Cabot (56). Byron is chief of a billion- dollar Artificial Intelligence firm, Astronomer. They are both understood to be married to other people.
Footage of the incident from the Coldplay concert in a stadium of 60,000 people in Boston, Massachusetts spread across the internet on Wednesday.
It shows the crowd watch on as lead singer Chris Martin joked 'oh look at these two…'
Before Mr Byron ducks out of sight and Ms Cabot spins round to turn her face away from the camera.
Martin then continues: 'You ok? Oh what? Either they're having an affair or they're just very shy. I'm not sure what to do…'
The video has now received over 50 million views on TikTok alone.
In the past 24 hours over 22,000 news articles have been written about the couples company Astronomer, while 9,000 were written about Byron according to Muckrack data.
A separate data company called Memo has also reportedly found that more people have read about the viral incident than Elon Musk's row with Donald Trump and the death of Pope Francis.
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