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You don’t have to have a hidden camera on your phone to end up in a viral video. Smartphones have created a decentralized surveillance network around the world, with bystanders ready to record and broadcast any event that hints of drama. But Andy Byron, the former CEO of data-analysis software company Astronomer, and Christine Cabot, the company’s head of human resources, should have been wary of the old-fashioned big screen. Last week, during a Coldplay concert in Massachusetts, they were captured on a stadium screen embracing. Once the couple realized they were being broadcast, they looked away from each other. Byron, who is married, ducked away from the camera. Cabot, who is not his wife, turned away and covered her face with her hands. But of course, there was no stopping the scene from spreading, especially after Coldplay frontman Chris Martin quipped from the stage: “Either they’re having an affair or they’re just really shy.” The clip instantly went viral on social media (one TikTok post has racked up over ten million likes) and generated plenty of headlines in traditional media. Byron and Cabot weren't exactly household names before the incident, but it turns out they were victims of the internet at the worst possible time.
If there’s a lesson to be learned from Coldplaygate, it’s how, over the past decade, virality in digital culture has morphed from an aspirational goal into a form of punishment. The climate of heightened online scrutiny, I believe, began with the case of Justine Sacco, a public relations professional who instantly gained infamy for a racist tweet in 2013 while she was disconnected from her flight. The next day, she was fired from her job at IAC. The following year, in a more subtle and instructive story, a teenager named Alex Lee, known as “Alex from Target,” became popular online simply by embodying the image of a 16-year-old American boy. He eventually grew disillusioned with his fame and left his burgeoning influencer career to take a job at UPS. (“It’s a lot better than doing social media,” he told People last year.)
The rise of video on social media has made objects of public attention more visible, literally: we’re more likely to see faces and hear voices, and to connect an online persona with a real-life counterpart. Perhaps dating back to the rise of the short-form video app Vine in the twenties, the mundane or absurd details of the physical world have inspired the best online content in real time. TikTok, which has exploded in popularity in the US during the pandemic, has cemented short video clips as the internet’s universal language. In 2022, a graphic designer working at West Elm and serial dater in New York named Caleb gained notoriety under the moniker West Elm Caleb when women he dated found each other on TikTok; they shared his photos and traded opinions on his ghosting tactics and habit of sending unsolicited nudes. Caleb became something of a culmination of the merging of “real” life and digital content. Accidental doxxing—revealing someone’s true identity in real life—has become the norm now that there’s no clear line between our online and offline lives. It’s unclear how Byron and Cabot’s identities were uncovered, but Coldplaygate didn’t require automated surveillance or facial recognition software. Amateur online detectives can easily pin down a tech company’s CEO, a role that, like many others these days, requires an active social media presence.
Doxxing has become a form of collective entertainment. It holds its victims accountable for their actions, forcing them to pay the price of forced virality. The internet is one giant glass greenhouse where everyone is throwing rocks, waiting for the crowd to zero in on the target and follow suit. Life is content, and content is defined by its ability to attract attention. The moral complexity of offline existence is largely absent when everything is subordinated to the logic of the feed. In the days of West Elm Caleb, the writer and critic of digital life Rain Fisher-Quann observed that the circular firing squad of social media “compulsively turns real people into interactive reality shows.” Still, it’s striking to see how enthusiastically the internet has embraced the infidelity of one unknown executive as entertainment, perhaps because of the story’s welcome levity compared to the hyperpartisan politics and military violence happening elsewhere in our time continuum. The couple has been the subject of memes, mentioned on the New York City Department of Sanitation's X account, mocked by Oasis during their reunion tour, and parodied at a game by the Philadelphia Phillies' mascot. A woman claiming to be Byron's daughter created a TikTok account and posted a video of herself around a campfire with the caption, “Rebuilding life after dad's cheating made national news.” The account then
Sourse: newyorker.com
