As the Coldplay kiss-cam couple fades into the bushes, here's what the internet hath wrought

Los Angeles Times

3 days ago

After the Coldplay kiss-cam kerfuffle, Chris Martin is back to his years-old tricks while the new Astronomer chief exec thinks the company is now a household name — but is it, really?
As the story of the Coldplay kiss-cam couple ducks out of camera range and into history, and we ride that dead horse into the sunset, let us take a moment to examine what the internet hath wrought.
First off, singer Chris Martin may have added a new riff to his concert script, post-kerfuffle, warning people at Saturday's Coldplay show in Wisconsin about the kiss-cam to come. Or has he?
Folks on Reddit who seem to know many things say no, he definitely has not. The 'fan cam' — turns out it's not a kiss-cam at all, go figure — is a gimmick the band has been using for quite a while. Martin picks out some people in the crowd and spins up a little original song about them.
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'[T]hey've been doing this at their concerts for yearrrrrrrrrs. First time this has really happened,' one Redditor said.
'We'd like to say hello to some of you in the crowd. How we're gonna do that is we're gonna use our cameras and put some of you on the big screen,' Martin said Saturday, as seen in video taken at the show, which some may notice is followed by comments from many media outlets requesting permission to post the video. 'So please, if you haven't done your makeup,' Martin continued, 'do your makeup now.'
Sounds like a fairly anodyne introduction that could easily be followed by, 'Oh, look at these two. All right, c'mon. You're OK. Oh, what? Either they're having an affair or they're just very shy.' But hey, that's been done, amirite?
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Grace Springer, the concert-goer who posted the video of the alleged cheaters in the first place, reassured viewers of a U.K. morning show that her TikTok was 'not monetized,' so she made exactly zero dollars from kicking off the dust-up.
Then again, Springer is the same person who said, 'A part of me feels bad for turning these people's lives upside down, but, play stupid games … win stupid prizes,' so it would have been kinda perfect if she got rich off the viral moment.
She also revealed on 'This Morning' that the moment almost didn't happen, because she didn't think much of the video when she shot it, she said.
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'It wasn't until after the concert, where I was debriefing with my friends and I said, 'Let's review the footage, let's see if it really looks that bad.' And I think it does,' Springer explained. So of course, she had to post it. Because of course, she did.
Clearly, her friends should bear some of the blame. Someone get on that.
Now, over at the Free Press, writer Kat Rosenfield had thoughts about all of this bad behavior.
'It was a full-bore public shaming, imbued with an unhinged and vicious glee that we hadn't experienced since, well, the last time millions of strangers rallied to the cause of destroying someone's life — but magnified by the fact that everything and everyone involved was a standard menu item at the Things You Love to Hate buffet,' she wrote. 'Adultery. CEOs. HR representatives. Rich people with linen shirts and expensive highlights. Coldplay, for that matter.'
And she was right. The guy tendered his resignation as chief exec at software development firm Astronomer, and the company announced it was launching an investigation into the situation.
The original function of public shaming, she wrote, was to keep community bonds strong and hold people who would weaken them accountable. But, Rosenfield said, 'When we take joy in the distress and ruination of other people, we make monsters of ourselves,' in that the internet has turned public shaming into a gleeful, global spectator sport.
Excellent point. That said, the video really was entertaining. Irresistible, perhaps, if only because the man in question was married and the woman in question was his human resources subordinate who got caught breaking all the rules that are usually laid out by our friends in, well, human resources.
That aside, Astronomer's interim chief executive, co-founder Pete DeJoy, did take a moment to put things in perspective for the business itself, which was somewhat of a non-player character in this twisted game.
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'The events of the past few days have received a level of media attention that few companies — let alone startups in our small corner of the data and AI world — ever encounter,' DeJoy wrote Monday as part of a larger post on LinkedIn. 'The spotlight has been unusual and surreal for our team and, while I would never have wished for it to happen like this, Astronomer is now a household name.'
A household name. We ask again — is it, really? The internet jury remains out on that one.
Also, speaking of human resources, remember Alyssa Stoddard, the senior director of HR that Astronomer felt compelled to announce as NOT at the concert with former chief exec Andy Byron and top HR honcho Kristin Cabot?
That was because numerous stories were written claiming Stoddard was the 'other' woman on the kiss-cam/fan-cam/video, the one who was laughing and smiling and looking forward the entire time. Then there were stories saying that the first stories — some of which reportedly said she had been fired? — were mistaken. And it was all somehow blamed on a rumor that started on the social media platform now known by the very silly name X.
'As confirmed, I was not at the Coldplay concert on Wednesday night and I am not the brunette woman in the circulating videos. I am not involved in this,' Stoddard wrote on LinkedIn, sounding like she was neither laughing nor smiling. 'Being wrongly identified and then publicly harassed has been unnerving to say the least and incredibly difficult, both personally and professionally.
'I kindly ask that my privacy be respected, and that I be left out of this.'
If only it were that easy, Ms. Stoddard. If only it were that easy.