Social media has gone bonkers since last Wednesday night, when Andy Byron, the married CEO of New York-based software development company Astronomer, was caught by a “Kiss-cam” cuddling Kristin Cabot, the company’s head of human resources, on the Jumbotron at a Coldplay concert at Gillette stadium in Foxborough, Mass. When the two realized they were on camera, they went out of their way to look as guilty as possible, pulling apart, with her turning her back on the camera and him ducking out of view.
Morons. When you are caught beyond escaping, life competence dictates that you must have the presence of mind to maintain whatever shred of dignity you may have left. (Practice helps.) The couple’s futile efforts at a cover-up prompted Coldplay front man Chris Martin to say from the stage: “Either they’re having an affair or they’re very shy.”
Then the clip gained millions of hits on X, TikTok and Instagram, so it was easy to identify the illicit lovers. Astronomer announced that it had put Byron on leave, saying, “Astronomer is committed to the values and culture that have guided us since our founding. Our leaders are expected to set the standard in both conduct and accountability.” Over the weekend, Byron resigned.
The incident is an instant classic, which means people will remember it longer than the usual day-and-a-half. The Philadelphia Phillies made fun of the scandal by screening a video on the Jumbotron during Friday night’s game showing the team’s mascot Phillie Phanatic in an embrace with a fuzzy green companion. Commemorative merchandise, such as a sweatshirt bearing the legend “I TOOK MY SIDEPIECE TO THE COLDPLAY CONCERT AND IT RUINED MY LIFE” can be purchased online.
Ethics notes…
- Byron should have been fired for his carelessness, stupidity and lack of presence of mind in a crisis, never mind the cheating and the breach of company policies. Roaming cameras at concerts and sporting events have been standard fare for a long time. There is no, as we lawyers say, “expectation of privacy.”
- I was taught by my father’s knee to always keep cool when exposed in an embarrassing situation, and to defuse it to the extent possible by maintaining dignity and presence of mind. If the couple had waved at the camera, nobody would have noticed them.
- If you are having an affair, be certain that you’re proud of it—love, happiness, whatever your reasons may be. Behaving like you’ve been caught trying to steal the Crown Jewels shows that you know what you are doing is horribly wrong. Imagine if Ric and Ilsa behaved that way…
- I have been in that situation. One September in 1991, I had called in sick so I could go to a Baltimore Orioles-Boston Red Sox daytime double header necessitated by the previous night’s rain-out. The Sox were in a close race with the Toronto Blue Jays for the American League East championship. A WBAL reporter pulled me out of the crowd because of my Red Sox cap, and I found myself being interviewed on live TV. I was mid-answer when I realized, “Holy crap! I’m being broadcast at a baseball game after I claimed to be sick!” But I didn’t run away. I just continued the interview like nothing was amiss. If you can’t react in a crisis without panicking, you shouldn’t be a leader or manager.
- To his credit, Byron didn’t even attempt an apology, which could only be a “I’m deeply sorry I was caught” embarrassment.
- The main focus has been on Byron as is appropriate, but I presume his HR director significant other has been fired as well. What a hypocrite: it’s her job to enforce the policies she flagrantly ignored. She had better be planning a career change.
- I’ve been reading claims that kiss-cams are unethical. At this point, they are no more unethical than televising sporting events. Spectators know, or should, that they are in a public setting and should comport themselves appropriately.
- Does the Golden Rule dictate kindness toward the couple rather than ridicule? Nah. That conduct is a breach of valid social norms, and should attract scorn.
Ethics Alarms 
The Phanatic video was the funniest. I have taken a great deal of happiness this weekend at finding Coldplay Kiss-Cam memes. I agree wholeheartedly that they brought this on themselves by reacting the way they did.
Didn’t the Astronomer CEO guy issue an apology that AM discussed in her comment on last Friday’s Open Forum? It (the apology) was pathetic.
It was determined that the apology was a fake so my analysis of it was moot.
Well that’s weirder than the rest of the story!
But your analysis and conclusions were spot-on, even if the apology was bogus.
I am glad to see a post about something that is not about politics. It is a classical example of a CEO who falls victim to the cardinal sin of lust.
A couple of remarks:
“According to AM Golden at Friday’s open forum he did make an apology of the “This is not who I want to be” category. The apology was so lame that nobody paid attention to it.”
It was pointed out by others on the thread that the apology put out on social media and covered by some news sources turned out to be bogus.
Thank goodness it was fake, because otherwise it would have made my head explode.
No, to the former, yes to the latter. There are still plenty of ways to get dates and find a spouse without dating vertically in the workplace. You can date horizontally, and there’s still church, fandoms and other interest groups, online dating (just don’t bet too much on that one). More people just need to get out and do it.
As for feminisim, modern feminists need to recognize that much of the cultural and legal work of treating women as equal adults has been done. What’s left is to phase out the hook-up culture, as well as the notion that women have to be men (or vice-versa) in order to find fulfillment.
Whether it’s a kiss cam, a police body cam, an in-store cam, or one of those stupid sidewalk “auditors”, people need to learn that as long as you are un-interesting, you will not go viral if you are caught on one of these cameras. To Jack’s point, had they simply behaved as if they had every right to be standing there canoodling, the owner of the cell phone who picked up the jumbotron footage would likely never have posted it; or even if they had, it would not have taken off the way it did. Behaving like an ass is always fodder for social media consumption.
Speaking of no expectation of privacy, anyone else see the Eastman Credit Union video? Never trust frosted glass.
What begins an affair is the transfer of your reasoning power from your mind to you genitals (Big head, loses to little head.)
In doing so you have given up use of your critical evaluative faculty, a process of the will.
Thus discretion of judgment is impeded.
Ultimately, your lost of control of your concupiscence passions) will destroy you.
I suppose my question is are peoples lives so shallow that they must become involved in commenting of some schmucks sordid affair. Does the idea that something that goes viral makes it important to anyone other than the people involved? Sure the two behaved unethically presumably by cheating on their spouses. For all we know that both are in open relationships. Nothing seems out of bounds any more.
No doubt it is wrong for managers and subordinates to engage in sexual relationships. But where is it written that just because we have the means to expose every indiscretion that we should?
Constant attention to make this go viral simply shows that we enjoy “gotcha” moments that don’t involve us. We seem to love reveling in other people’s foibles. Next week no one will give a damn about these two people as we will have moved on to the viral moment at someone else’s expense. Do we do this to feel morally superior to others or something else? Will we concern ourselves if the individuals’ behaviors cost them far more than it should? Do we care that the spouses were further humiliated by the widespread attention? Will we care that children could easily wind up in single parent homes and may be unable to have a decent relationship with dad or mom because every kid at school will keep reminding them of this event?
Will we ever start examining our desire to point fingers when anyone who fails to live up to our stated but rarely followed standards of decency falls into deep despair and harms themselves or will we just say they brought it on themselves? Probably not because we are only concerned for making ourselves happy and introspection often leads to not feeling really good about ourselves.
Not a rationalization. I am just wondering what makes us feel it necessary to inject our false sanctimony on these issues.
The gleeful meanness of it all leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
We engage in this for the same reason as why we gossip, and publicly judge other people for their bad behavior. Gossip establishes and enforces the morals of the community (or society). This is especially important when the wrongdoer has power and high status. When we engage in gossip and public judgement, it also enhances our moral status in comparison.
Gossip is often laden with mis-truths, half-truths and outright lies so it can hardly establish or enforce morals.
So how is it any different than cyber bullying? This episode was to embarrass another person so we could get some kicks out of it and not to enforce some moral standard. It is a power play to bring people you do not care about down.
You can never elevate yourself by tearing down another you just teach them that demonizing others for some personal failing is what constitutes appropriate behavior.
We both approach the issue of gossip differently; I am less interested in the ethics of gossip, and more in why we engage in that act. For that I am more interested why biologists and (evolutionary) psychologists have to say about this topic. These scientist go back to the deep history of mankind to find answers to why certain behaviors exists, and which moral concerns were adaptive for people’s survival when we still hunter-gatherers (HG) at the savannas in Africa. E.g. Jonathan Haidt’s moral foundation theory (MFT) in his book “The Righteous Mind” follows this approach.
Some of the concerns of HG tribes was the avoidance of despotism, and enforcing fairness and reciprocity. In a HG tribe there is little privacy, as everybody knows everybody very well, and there are all watching each other. In a HG society reputation is currency. So if you were a freeloader, or you violated some taboo, everybody would come to know about this very soon. This is because of conversations around the campfire, also known as gossip. Gossip works as tool for enforcement of norms; nobody wants to have a bad reputation because that would make your life in the tribe very miserable.
As we descend from the HG, and gossip was an adaptive tool in deep human history, humans of today still gossip. And it still works as an enforcement tool, because how often have we not engaged in certain behavior out of concerns about what others may think.
Ok. I can see we are defining our terms differently. You define it gossip as “an adaptive tool in deep human history, humans of today still gossip. And it still works as an enforcement tool, because how often have we not engaged in certain behavior out of concerns about what others may think.”
We avoid certain behaviors not for what others think but how it affects us as a consequence. If I betray a confidence and lose a friend or job because of it I will think long and hard about doing so. On the other hand if others think badly of me but do not inflict any consequences on me as a result of my socially unacceptable behavior how does what they think cause me to avoid the behavior? Conversely, gossip can be used as propaganda to inflict harm on others to elevate one’s own social standing. To enforce group norms their must be general agreement beforehand.
I would describe that enforcement tools of social behavior is more along the lines of peer pressure. Shunning or otherwise being expelled from the group is not gossip it is a punishment. The example you provided about the HG tribe suggests it is more discussion of common observations than what we consider modern day gossip in which people derive a sense of power by showing how much more “in the know” they are than the rest of the group.
There is no doubt that gossip promotes social cohesion among the parties involved in transmitting negative information about an absent third party. It makes them feel superior. Some say it builds trust but I find that hard to believe as I would never tell someone who engages in gossip. Only an idiot would trust a person who engages is spreading negative information about others who are not there to rebut the statements made. If you make negative comments about others when they are not around or betray their confidences you will probably exhibit the same behavior toward me if it benefits you.
My definition is closer to the following.
Some key points made in a Psychology Today article on this topic: June 24, 2021
The first paragraph begins with . . .
“People like to gossip. Gossip is information shared about an absent third party. Gossip differs from the human tendency to talk about other people in that gossip tends to focus on negative information to demean the target. If the information being talked about were positive, it would be labeled praise or envy. Gossip typically centers on the negative aspects of a person’s personal appearance, personal achievements, or personal behaviors.
The article goes on to show that parts of the brain derive pleasure from talking negatively about others but not when the negativity is directed at them. The article does not explicitly say so but implies the effect occurs even if it is false. Thus, the question remains does the negative effects in the brain have a net positive benefit to society if both true and false information is circulated about another. Moreover, does constant negative information reinforce within someone the very behaviors society seeks to mitigate.
There are many more efficacious enforcement mechanisms to ensure ethical and moral behavior or promote group norms and cohesion other than gossip. It is because we lack the spine to tell people to their face what we think we resort to anonymous gossip.
We need to consider the type of culture as well, especially whether we are dealing with a shame culture or a guilt culture. Your response is typical for a guilt culture such as our western culture.
Shame and guilt are both ethical emotions, however shame is more sensitive to how you are being perceived in the community; this perception is often been shaped by how members of the community talk about you. This talk can have a positive tone as well as a negative tone. E.g. a soldier who is widely praised by his peers during wartime may receive a medal. However somebody who is engaging in unethical behavior may be the talk of the town, face ridicule and other consequences; this works as a restraint on unethical behavior. I just see a post up at Ethics Alarms about to very unethical eye surgeons; if the staff at their office had discussed their behavior, somebody might have brought the issue of reporting it for discipline.
This brings up an other issue, namely of power imbalances. When somebody with authority or power misbehaves, there is hesitancy to call them out for their behavior individually, as this might have some negative repercussions. Discussing that misbehavior with others may be safer, and if the misbehavior is widely known it may restrain the powerful party from retaliation, plus you may gain powerful allies to stop the misbehaving party.
There is also a dangerous aspect to gossip and moral judgment, as it is often used to elevate your own moral status at the expense of others. Cancel culture has shown many examples of this.
When you played hooky from work to attend the game, did you get caught?
No!