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This weekend, my usual scroll of random movie clips, India’s Got Talent auditions, and one-pot recipes was hijacked by content creators, brands, and even news outlets. No matter where I looked – Instagram, LinkedIn, Reddit, Twitter (sorry, X) – I was haunted by one thing: that damn Coldplay jumbotron kiss cam.

(If you're new here — hi! Every fortnight, I dive into the internet’s weirdest trends, viral culture, and digital misinformation. Most of it comes with an eye roll.)

A man. A woman. A few seconds of awkwardness; momentarily unsure of what to do. And boom — the internet decided it had cracked the case of “The Cheating CEO and His Sidepiece”.

Let’s be honest: there’s nothing funny about a CEO getting caught with his colleague on a jumbotron. It's just painfully real. But how it broke the internet is what broke my brain. 

Within hours, fake statements flooded every platform. A fabricated "apology" from Astronomer CEO Andy Byron garnered 3.5 million views, complete with the hilariously specific line: "I am a Coldplay fan. And not just of the first two albums. I also like the recent stuff." A fake Coldplay response about "camera-free sections for people and their sidepieces" went equally viral.

But here's where 2025 gets truly dystopian: Content creators didn't stop at screenshots. They've now created AI versions of Byron and his colleague hugging and dancing during their caught-on-camera moment, manufacturing endless variations of their humiliation.

As the clip spread, it spawned an entire ecosystem of lies. A woman named Alyssa Stoddard was falsely accused of orchestrating the whole thing for a promotion – complete with elaborate Instagram reels ‘explaining’ her alleged master plan. What is this, Succession season 5?

The company took over 24 hours to respond, creating the perfect vacuum for AI-generated videos and conspiracy theories to explode. Even French model Julie Tuzet got dragged in when viral "daughter's reaction" videos used her old TikToks to fake a family meltdown. She had zero connection to any of this.

Then came the LinkedIn philosophers. Real estate experts and marketing gurus dissected the clip with hot takes like "Don't let private actions lead to public consequences for your business" and somehow managed to plug their resume coaching services using screenshots from the concert. The audacity is genuinely impressive.

Let’s be clear: I’m not defending cheating. Affairs wreck lives. But let's inject some reality into our moral panic. Infidelity therapists will tell you workplace affairs aren't scandalous aberrations– they're statistically routine. Coworkers are the most common affair partners, according to clinical psychologist Kathy Nickerson.

In India, where we pretend extramarital relationships are Western imports, the numbers tell a different story: 53% of Indians have been unfaithful (Ashley Madison survey, 2025). About 36% of workers have dated colleagues (Economic Times, 2015). Nearly 25% of users of extramarital dating apps work in corporate jobs.

So no, this isn’t rare; it’s just rarely caught in 4K with Coldplay as the soundtrack.

The response revealed our ugliest impulses. One tweet zoomed in on the woman's wrinkles, declaring Byron shouldn't lose "everything for such a woman"—'such' being code for 'old.' The misogyny was breathtaking.

While the Coldplay video was about online infamy, another video of an Indian tourist in America, Avlani, was about public shaming. Avlani was arrested for allegedly shoplifting $1,000 worth of items at Target. In the video, she is heard pleading, "What can I do? Why can't I pay for it?" And, it became instant meme fodder.

I counted over 800 Instagram reels using her audio overlaid on babies and cats "stealing" things. The YouTube channel that posted her arrest footage has 200+ videos, but this one went mega-viral because it had everything the algorithm loves: public breakdown, a villain, and the illusion of justice.

Predictably, misinformation followed. Indian users shared footage of a Mexican shoplifter, falsely claiming it was Avlani while lamenting "India's reputation worldwide."

Online shaming isn't new, but 2025's version is industrialised. The internet isn't just watching—it's auditioning, judging, and most importantly, capitalising. There's literal merchandise now: sweatshirts reading "I took my sidepiece to the Coldplay concert and it ruined my life."

The Philadelphia Phillies trolled the moment on their jumbotron. KFC made sly tweets. Marketing gurus sold LinkedIn courses using concert screenshots. 

Prince William once dreaded kiss cams in 2012. In 2025, you don't need fame, just one public mistake in our surveillance-saturated world.

"Infidelity, public meltdowns and bad parenting are all ripe for viral moments because viewers feel they're peeking behind the scenes of another person's private life and helping enact the punishment they deserve," cultural critic Rayne Fisher-Quann told the Washington Post.

The latest is: Byron has been removed from the company, replaced by a new CEO. His family faces public scrutiny. We don't know what happened to his colleague Kristin Cabot. But the algorithm has already moved on, hunting for the next unlucky character to turn into content.

The real tragedy is in our collective decision to transform private failures into public entertainment.

So if you're still laughing at that Coldplay clip, maybe ask yourself why.

Because the joke isn’t really on them. 

It’s on us.

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