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.<\/p>\n
First off, singer Chris Martin may have added a new riff to his concert script, post-kerfuffle, warning people at Saturday\u2019s Coldplay show in Wisconsin about the kiss-cam to come. Or has he?<\/p>\n
Folks on Reddit who seem to know many things say no, he definitely has not. The \u201cfan cam\u201d \u2013 turns out it\u2019s not a kiss-cam at all, go figure \u2013 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.<\/p>\n
\u201c[T]hey\u2019ve been doing this at their concerts for yearrrrrrrrrs. First time this has really happened,\u201d one Redditor said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019d like to say hello to some of you in the crowd. How we\u2019re gonna do that is we\u2019re gonna use our cameras and put some of you on the big screen,\u201d 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. \u201cSo please, if you haven\u2019t done your makeup,\u201d Martin continued, \u201cdo your makeup now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sounds like a fairly anodyne introduction that could easily be followed by, \u201cOh, look at these two. All right, c\u2019mon. You\u2019re OK. Oh, what? Either they\u2019re having an affair or they\u2019re just very shy.\u201d But hey, that\u2019s been\u00a0done, amirite?<\/p>\n
Grace Springer, the concertgoer who posted the video of the alleged cheaters in the first place, reassured viewers of a UK morning show that her TikTok was \u201cnot monetised,\u201d so she made exactly zero dollars from kicking off the dust-up.<\/p>\n
Then again, Springer is the same person who said, \u201cA part of me feels bad for turning these people\u2019s lives upside down, but, play stupid games \u2026 win stupid prizes,\u201d so it would have been kinda perfect if she got rich off the viral moment.<\/p>\n
She also revealed on This Morning that the moment almost didn\u2019t happen, because she didn\u2019t think much of the video when she shot it, she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt wasn\u2019t until after the concert, where I was debriefing with my friends and I said, \u2018Let\u2019s review the footage, let\u2019s see if it really looks that bad\u2019. And I think it does,\u201d Springer explained. So of course, she had to post it. Because of course, she did.<\/p>\n
Clearly, her friends should bear some of the blame. Someone get on that.<\/p>\n
Now, over at the Free Press, writer Kat Rosenfield had thoughts about all of this bad behaviour.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a full-bore public shaming, imbued with an unhinged and vicious glee that we hadn\u2019t experienced since, well, the last time millions of strangers rallied to the cause of destroying someone\u2019s life \u2013 but magnified by the fact that everything and everyone involved was a standard menu item at the Things You Love to Hate buffet,\u201d she wrote. \u201cAdultery. CEOs. HR representatives. Rich people with linen shirts and expensive highlights. Coldplay, for that matter.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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, \u201cWhen we take joy in the distress and ruination of other people, we make monsters of ourselves,\u201d in that the Internet has turned public shaming into a gleeful, global spectator sport.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
That aside, Astronomer\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe events of the past few days have received a level of media attention that few companies \u2013 let alone startups in our small corner of the data and AI world \u2013 ever encounter,\u201d DeJoy wrote Monday as part of a larger post on LinkedIn. \u201cThe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
A household name. We ask again \u2013 is it, really? The Internet jury remains out on that one.<\/p>\n
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?<\/p>\n
That was because numerous stories were written claiming Stoddard was the \u201cother\u201d 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 \u2013 some of which reportedly said she had been fired? \u2013 were mistaken. And it was all somehow blamed on a rumour that started on the social media platform now known by the very silly name X.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs 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,\u201d Stoddard wrote on LinkedIn, sounding like she was neither laughing nor smiling. \u201cBeing wrongly identified and then publicly harassed has been unnerving to say the least and incredibly difficult, both personally and professionally.<\/p>\n
\u201cI kindly ask that my privacy be respected, and that I be left out of this.\u201d<\/p>\n
If only it were that easy, Ms. Stoddard. If only it were that easy.\u00a0\u2013\u00a0Los Angeles Times\/Tribune News Service<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As the story of the Coldplay kiss-cam couple ducks out of camera range and into history, and we…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17443,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[11382,1638,2415,224,86,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-17442","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-internet","8":"tag-facial-recognition","9":"tag-internet","10":"tag-relationships","11":"tag-social-media","12":"tag-technology","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom","15":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17442","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17442"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17442\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}