Coldplay-gate: Since When Did Cheating Become a Crime?

On Sunday, the 27th of July, at the Coldplay concert held at the Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Lionel Messi and his wife Antonella Roccuzzo became the unlikely stars of the night. The Jumbotron (or Kiss Cam as netizens have taken to calling it) projected the couple to the roughly 65,000 fans in the stadium. Messi wears a white Hawaiian shirt which contrasts with the back dress his wife wears. He waves at the crowd, his face drawn into a warm smile. Chris Martin, the lead singer of Coldplay, playfully serenades him and the crowd chants “Messi, Messi, Messi.” 

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The video instantly drew comparisons to the scandal that many, including The New Yorker, have christened “Coldplay-gate.” For the uninitiated, on the 16th of July Andy Byron, the CEO of the software company Astronomer, was cuddling with Kristin Cabot at a Coldplay concert when they noticed they were being projected onto the stadium’s jumbotron. Watch the video and observe the expression on their faces go from placid, to dazed, to “Oh my God, I have to get out of here.” As soon as they realized they were being projected on the screen, they peeled apart from each other, scurrying away from the cameras like squirrels evading a predator.

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Ironically, their attempts at escaping the situation only served to exacerbate it. “Either they’re having an affair, or they’re just very shy,” Chris Martin observed from the stage. The incident has since become one of the most talked about in recent years, which is expected for a scandal of this magnitude. What has however fascinated me about this conversation is the tenor it has assumed. While the conversation has thrived on humorous quips about the scandal, it has also largely been powered by schadenfreude; it almost feels like we have reduced them to characters—as opposed to real people—and decided to exact vengeance on them. 

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The pair—Byron and Cabot—have been excoriated, relentlessly memed, parodied, and even doxxed. Under normal circumstances, all of this would be viewed as extreme, but somehow, the fact that they were caught cheating seems to justify the disproportionate blowback the pair have faced. Cabot has been placed on compulsory leave by Astronomer and Byron resigned his CEO position—a largely symbolic act given that his termination seemed imminent. 

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Granted, they violated company policy and it falls to the company to penalize them however it deems fit. But the widespread exultation over their downfall is what troubles me. Cheating is of course a profound moral failing and should be vehemently condemned. The emotional damage it can cause to the perpetrators and those on the receiving end is too great to be taken lightly. But cheating is not a crime, especially not one that justifies upending people’s lives, violating their privacy, and potentially putting them out of work for a long time. 

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In Helen Schulman’s essay for The New York Times, Coldplay and The Dignity of Shame, one of the many literary commentaries on the subject, she valorizes Byron’s resignation, juxtaposes him with Donald Trump, and then presents his resignation as the counterpoint to Trump’s “shameless.” The essay, like many other opinions I’ve glimpsed on the pages of publications and social media, falters for two reasons. 

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The first is that comparing Trump’s various outsized infractions, many of which have reshaped global affairs in inexorable ways, to Byron’s cheating is like comparing apples and oranges—entirely different things. Trump is a convicted felon, why then is he being lumped together with Byron, whose offense, as far as we know, is cheating? The second lapse of the essay is that Schulman seems to misunderstand the distinction between shame and humiliation—two related but entirely different terms—or she warped their meanings to fit neatly within her narrative. 

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While shame is internal, a voluntary sense of contrition; humiliation is the experience of being shamed by others. And while shame derives from a recognition of wrongdoing and a desire to make amends, humiliation tends to feel like being stripped naked and made to walk on the streets, under the full glare of a crowd.

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Cheating is a fraught subject. But what does it say about us as a society if we ignore personal boundaries and withhold empathy towards people because they were caught erring? And before you make a counterargument, pause for a second and imagine a wrongdoing of yours being broadcast to the entire world. At any rate, the lives of Byron and Cabot have been irrevocably impacted, and the least we can do is let them be. 

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