Perspective: The Coldplay kiss cam memes are funny. The story they highlight is not

If you are among the quarter of Americans fortunate enough to not spend much — or any — of your life on social media, there’s a slight chance you haven’t heard of the Coldplay kiss cam spectacle from last week.

Astronomer CEO Andy Byron and his colleague Kristin Cabot were captured briefly on video camera during a large concert for the band Coldplay in Boston’s Gillette Stadium last Wednesday. It’s the kind of moment that finds couples almost always gleeful about displaying their affections (unless they turn out to be a brother and sister).

But there are other reasons to not be excited with the public recognition of your affections. Maybe you don’t want anyone to know you’re together in the first place?

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As soon as the camera panned to Byron and Cabot locked in a warm embrace, they ducked and covered their faces like a bomb was about to go off.

And it did. “Oh, look at these two,” joked Chris Martin, the band’s lead singer. “Either they’re having an affair or they’re just very shy.”

Even extremely shy people, however, don’t dive for cover like this. And after a concertgoer posted the video online, internet sleuths quickly discovered who these individuals were, the company where each of them worked, and who they were actually married to.

That company, Astronomer, announced a formal investigation the next day, then a few hours later announced Byron was being placed on leave. A day later, the company reported it had accepted his resignation as CEO.

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In the meanwhile, the internet had a field day with an array of memes, some admittedly hilarious.

There were multiple Star Wars memes, an expanded version of Edvard Much’s “the Scream,“ and absurdly odd couples being similarly discovered, including Fozzie the Bear and Miss Piggy and Ronald McDonald and Burger King. There was even one of Patrick Mahomes cuddling up to a referee.

The Phillies featured their “Phanatic” mascot taking a nosedive after being caught with another muppet — while real couples across the nation began copying the gesture at weekend baseball games.

“If you’re having a bad day, at least you didn’t get caught cheating at a Coldplay concert,” said one sign held by a man.

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It’s all pretty humorous, until it’s not.

“At first, this is so funny until you think about his family (and) her family,” posted one social media user.

How many of us gawking online have stopped to ask that question: What has this been like for this man’s two sons, or this woman’s son and daughter — to say nothing of the mortified spouses?

Discovering a betrayal like this is shattering enough in private. But it’s hard to imagine how much this public spectacle complicates their sorrow as family members, none of whom have the comfort of having quiet space to grieve (many of whom eradicated all their social media presence — retreating as best they can from public view).

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Then there’s Byron and Cabot themselves, who went from being swept away in one sad betrayal, to now finding themselves swept away in something else entirely. In the Free Press, Kat Rosenfield called it “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.”

“It’s hard not to feel that frisson of schadenfreude at seeing a couple of cheaters get theirs,” the writer admitted, acknowledging the role public shaming has played in human society — namely, “to hold people accountable for doing things that tore at the fabric of social trust, to keep the bonds of community strong by punishing those who would weaken them.”

But Rosenfield underscored that “the worst pain of shaming wasn’t in being called names, or put naked in the stocks and pelted with dung; it was having to look into the faces of the people you’d hurt, people who sat beside you in church, who ate meals at your table, whose children played together with yours.”

That’s what is different about this social media spectacle, she argued. “Traditional shamings would inevitably be restrained by the knowledge that whatever you did to this person, you would have to live with the continued reminder of having done it,” Rosenfield said. “When it was all over, you and the transgressor would once again have to work, pray, and live together side by side.”

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By contrast, a virtual shaming like this lacks any such “limiting principle,” she wrote — with the “faceless, nameless, avatar-masked mob” expressing their feelings, motivated “not by disappointment or duty” but by a kind of “ravening bloodlust.” In this case, that shaming was for a heartbreaking mistake that will follow these two the rest of their life.

If there’s anything remotely positive about this story, it’s a reminder that while attitudes have become more lax over time, most people still have strong feelings about infidelity. A 2022 Gallup survey found 9 in 10 Americans say marital infidelity is morally wrong — invoking more moral disapproval than any of the other behaviors surveyed (including abortion, suicide, death penalty, premarital sex, pornography and polygamy).

More specific questions from another 2022 survey by the Survey Center on American Life found that only 61% of men and 70% of women say it is “always morally wrong” for a married man or woman to have an affair.

Even with widespread disapproval, however, nearly half of Americans report such infidelity has happened to them. Between 46-58% of women and 34-50% of men, depending on the survey, report having a spouse or partner cheating on them, according to a 2025 report by the Survey Center on American Life.

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The devastating emotional and social impacts of infidelity are clear in the research literature. And both spirituality and religious practice are generally protective against this kind of marital betrayal.

“If there’s a truly compelling reason not to normalize shaming as a global, always-on public spectator sport,” Rosenfield concludes, it’s “simply this: When we take joy in the distress and ruination of other people, we make monsters of ourselves.”

We don’t have to be this way. Even if we laugh at the memes, we can then offer sincere hopes and prayers for the affected families and these two devastated, humiliated and unemployed individuals.

As the Apostle Paul’s famously taught the people in Corinth, it’s possible to learn a kind of love together that “rejoiceth not in iniquity” (“finds no joy in unrighteousness” (HCSB) and is “not happy with evil” (GNT), 1 Corinthians 13:6).

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That’s the kind of love that stands a chance at integrating those who betray our trust back into loving community — something we may all need in our lives some day, and in some way.

Let’s offer a little of that grace to this couple too.