Now leave the Coldplay couple alone

The secret to being a good columnist is to have opinions that your readers won’t be able to predict. That’s how you get people to come back for more, week after week: they enjoy your writing but can never quite tell what you’ll talk about next, and what stance you’ll be taking.

I’m afraid what follows will, if anything, go too far the other way. I’m about to be so predictable it’s going to feel silly, like an inside joke. It’s going to feel like I’m having you on. I do think it’s an argument worth having though, and seemingly have no choice but to wade into the realm of self-parody.

Right, so here goes: I think it’s bad that Astronomer’s CEO and head of HR – both married to other people – were mocked and castigated by the entire world for being caught apparently having a fling at a Coldplay concert. I think they should have probably been left alone.

If you’ve spent the past few weeks in a cave, or on a faraway beach with little Wi-Fi, the story was as follows: Coldplay plays gig in America, and shows random fans on a Jumbotron screen. Jumbotron camera sweeps through the crowd, and eventually stops on couple gently cuddling. Couple realise they’re on camera, and visibly panic. One of them even tries to hide from Jumbotron. Coldplay singer Chris Martin jokes about situation; whole incident is filmed, then posted online; sleuths find out couple were colleagues, not spouses; rest is history.

Now, again: do I, as a French woman, writing in a British newspaper, really feel the need to defend the adulterous pair? Sadly, I do. I am, for the avoidance of doubt, not feeling sorry for them for shrugging Gallic reasons, especially since they were both management at the same company.

For the avoidance of doubt, cheating on your spouse isn’t a good or nice thing to do. Everyone agrees with that. What the rest of the world and I seemingly disagree on, however, is that punishment should fit the crime.

Having quite a public affair with your colleague isn’t great, but is it so bad that it justifies having millions and millions of people across the world make fun of you, celebrate you losing your job, and generally discuss your actions?

Suggested Reading

My stand against the London-haters

Marie Le Conte

I don’t personally think so, which seemingly puts me in a minority. Isn’t that troubling? I tried making that point on Bluesky and was told, in effect, that they had it coming. Again: they don’t make for especially sympathetic case studies, but that’s the whole point. Human rights are human rights because they apply even to the difficult cases we’d rather not think about. Rules about how we engage with the world online ought to be the same.

They should also be something we engage with knowingly. As I’ve written about several times before, one of my greatest concerns about modern technology is that it has made us alter our behaviours in so many small and gradual ways that we never stopped to consider what we were doing, and whether we should be doing it at all.

Etiquette usually evolves with time to deal with the ways in which we live with and around each other, but the internet swept in so quickly that our social mores are yet to fully adapt. If say, the Coldplay gig incident had happened a few decades ago, do you think it would have been appropriate for every newspaper in the West to publish at least one prominent story on the couple, naming and shaming them both, and printing their pictures? Wouldn’t it have felt odd for people to discuss, mock and judge them for days on end?

Because that’s exactly what’s happened here. Googling “Astronomer CEO” shows that dozens and dozens of outlets have dedicated column inches to the initial incident, and the various follow-ups. Social media platforms have, obviously, also joined in on the fun, with the story trending on several of them. Again: is this really the sort of world we want to live in?

It’s entirely possible that I’m being a killjoy, and should just enjoy having a light chuckle at the expense of two rich people getting their comeuppance. Heaven knows I’ve done it before, in different contexts.

This one just leaves me queasy, though. Once upon a time, only the most dour of teenage left wing online circles would decide that even a minor social infraction meant that people deserved to get cancelled. How is it that this practice has now spread to, well – everyone else?

As someone who was part of those groups at the time, I can also tell you that things rarely end well when everyone starts feeling both sociopathically righteous yet simultaneously anxious and paranoid. It really shouldn’t be a surprise, but making everyone both a jailer and a prisoner in their own online panopticon doesn’t do anyone’s mental health any favours.

Being the bigger person doesn’t feel as good in the moment, I’ll grant you that, but I can guarantee it’ll be better for us all in the long run.