A tech CEO and his company’s HR manager had a joyful evening turn into a nightmare after they popped up on the big screen at a Coldplay concert in Boston on Wednesday.
The viral moment is one of many recent examples of people’s lives being upended by social media, as experts say we are increasingly under multiple layers of surveillance and subject to heavy social media scrutiny that can be harmful.
Astronomer CEO Andy Byron, who multiple reports say is married, and his company’s chief people officer Kristin Cabot were embracing, but quickly jumped away from each other as they appeared on a giant screen in front of more than 66,000 fans at the concert. Byron crouched down to hide from the camera as Cabot covered her face with her hands.
In a TikTok video with seven million likes, posted by user @instaagrace, Coldplay singer Chris Martin is heard saying: “Either they’re having an affair or they’re just very shy.”
The clip was soon splashed all across social media, with users speculating that the two must have been cheating on their spouses. Angling to prove it, some got to work sleuthing to find out their identities, posting their theories on sites like Reddit and X.
On Friday afternoon, Andy Byron was the top trending search on Google in the past 48 hours. Online gambling sites have even posted bets on whether he’ll be fired.
Astronomer posted a statement on X Friday afternoon, saying it has “initiated a formal investigation into this matter.”
Evan Light, an expert in privacy and surveillance technology and co-ordinator of critical information policy studies at the University of Toronto, says the case is “an interesting analogy for life online in general” and the tension between private and public life.
“I think many still had the assumption that if we go into a show like these two people did, and you’re amongst tens of thousands of people, that maybe you can relish in some anonymity, the way that we might think that we do online,” he said. “In reality we don’t, necessarily. The Jumbotron can capture you and dramatically change your life.”
Canadians among the named and shamed
The Coldplay fans are the latest in a long line of people named and shamed after unwittingly being posted online.
An Alberta man went viral last week after challenging former NHL enforcer Nick Tarnasky to a fight on a golf course in Red Deer, Alta., and ending up on the receiving end of a beatdown.
After the fight was strewn across social media and news articles, Trevor Ogilvie posted an apology video, saying he “drank way too much” alcohol before the July 4 incident at Alberta Springs Golf Course. “Not my finest moment,” he said.
#SORRY — The golfer who got tossed into the pond during the slow play altercation has released an apology video.
“Played 36 holes of golf, we drank way too much and my mouth ran faster than my brain.”
(Via: trevor.ogilvie.94/IG) pic.twitter.com/ykFolo54cZ
In April, an image of a retired Liberal supporter giving two middle fingers at a rally for party Leader Mark Carney in Brantford, Ont., went viral and was shared heavily in right-wing social media circles.
The man was turned into memes and dubbed the “Brantford Boomer,” and identified online as Matt Janes, prompting him to delete his Facebook account.
“It’s been a week from hell, it’s taken over my life,” Janes told CBC News in an interview later that month.
June Tangney, a professor of psychology at George Mason University in Virginia who studies shame and guilt, says we live in a world where we have almost no privacy and people tend to be drawn to “salacious” interpersonal stories, especially when they can feel “morally superior.”
On social media, in the absence of face-to-face interactions, these things can quickly spiral as people play off each other.
CBC’s visual investigations team reviewed all the social media footage that led this Liberal supporter to bust out the double bird. WARNING: This video includes profanity, threats of violence and racist language.
Tangney says everyone has made bad choices, and the online reactions can be out of proportion.
“When people are excommunicated, and totally distanced and treated like they are a certain kind of negative person for having done one thing, that’s really kind of overkill,” she said.
Tangney also warns that public shaming could prevent people from focusing on making amends for their behaviour and making positive changes because it can be hard for them not to get defensive and angry at the social media fallout.
“If people try to justify the the schadenfreude and delight in pouncing on somebody who is an easy mark, think carefully about that and realize that it can be very, very hurtful and very harmful,” she said.
Widespread surveillance increasing: prof
Light says people are increasingly under surveillance on multiple levels, by government and police as well as private businesses and home doorbell cameras.
With “more cell phones than people on the earth,” he says he worries the constant surveillance is also affecting the way people act in public, and how it impacts the evolution of kids and society in general.
“I worry that it risks, say, people self-censoring or feeling the need to be clinical or in control — that there’s a pushback on spontaneity,” Light said.
New York City’s sanitation department played into those concerns on Thursday, posting a photo of Byron and Cabot to its official X account.
“Cameras are EVERYWHERE! Don’t get caught doing something you *maybe* shouldn’t be doing,” the post reads, above the screenshot from the viral video.
“Thinking about doing something naughty, like dumping trash in the City? We’ve got video cameras all over. We WILL catch you — and you will pay the price!”
