Shucking Oysters: Canoodling 101
By Alex Allen
Two words. Coldplay and Jumbotron. If you have no idea, I congratulate you on your blissfulness. The operative word is cheating. Why break up when you can do a bit of canoodling on the side? Except it’s not the heady 80s anymore where you can sneak off to some motel and not get caught. Today, we’re surrounded by gadgets ready to record indiscretions, lapses in judgment, and any incident containing a hint of drama.
The first rule for not getting caught in an extramarital affair by a seven-time Grammy winner on a Jumbotron screen in front of 66,000 people is, of course, to not engage in an extramarital affair that can then be called out by a seven-time Grammy winner on a Jumbotron screen in front of 66,000 people.
Some say if the cheating couple didn’t react the way they did, nobody would have noticed and exposed who they were, the now infamous Andy Byron, CEO of Astronomer and HR lady Kristen Cabot. Byron, who is married, with two children, dodged off camera. Cabot, who is not his wife, spun to face away and hid her face in her hands. But, of course, it was already too late for them to stop the scene from spreading, especially after Chris Martin, the lead singer of Coldplay, observed from the stage, “Oooh, look at these two! Alright, come on, you’re okay. Uh-oh, what? Either they’re having an affair, or they’re just very shy.” A lip reader reportedly revealed what the CEO reportedly said to Cabot in the viral clip: “F***ing hell, it’s me!”
The clip captured by concertgoer Grace Springer, of course, instantly took off on social and traditional media. Springer said that she posted the clip because she thought it was an “interesting reaction” to seeing yourself on the screen. “A part of me feels bad for turning these people’s lives upside down, but play stupid games…win stupid prizes.” Justin Murphy said it best: “The dramatic effect of the video derives in part from Andy Byron’s lack of the one virtue that even the worst rakes in history have generally mustered: discretion.”
Did he think he would be on Jumbotron with the HR lady? Of course not, that’s like a freak accident, but he could’ve been seen with her in the lineup and that’s a risk he and she were willing to take. When you go in public having an affair, chances are that you will be caught.
Like a row of dominoes, day one, Byron deleted his LinkedIn profile, and his wife, Megan Kerrigan Byron, removed her husband’s last name from her display name on Facebook, then deleted her account altogether. Cabot who is thrice-divorced, also deleted her LinkedIn profile, which showed her “area of expertise” in “employee engagement” and “leadership transitions.” Day three, Astronomer announced on LinkedIn that Byron had resigned and Cabot had been put on leave. “Our leaders are expected to set the standard in both conduct and accountability, and recently, that standard was not met,” the company said. “While awareness of our company may have changed overnight, our product and our work for our customers have not.”
Pete DeJoy, interim Astronomer CEO, posted somewhat ironically on his LinkedIn: “The spotlight has been unusual and surreal for our team and, while I would never have wished for it to happen like this, Astronomer is now a household name.” Really? How many of its new followers are really in need of an “orchestration-first DataOps platform built on Apache Airflow”?
The reason Byron has attracted such extreme mockery, it seems, is his physical response to the spotlight. As an anthropological matter, Murphy adds, “it is among the most pathetic instances of physical theatre produced by an adult man in the smartphone era. How is an observer of public culture not to comment upon such an artifact? Here we are presented with a man whose authentic instinct was to hide like a cornered rodent. This is an economically successful man, the leader of a successful company. And yet his fully developed adult nature is so craven that he weaseled away to hide – from the world, his wife, and himself. That’s the central meaning of this short film, which is not in the genre of comedy but horror.”
Evan Light, an expert in privacy and surveillance technology and co-ordinator of critical information policy studies at the University of Toronto, says the incident 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 among 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.” Forever.
So, for damage control who are you going to call? Gwyneth Paltrow, the former Mrs. Chris Martin, mother of his children, has been hired by Astronomer to step in as the fresh face of “let’s move on and rebrand.” As one commenter wrote, because when your “company gets memed into oblivion after a stadium-wide soft launch of an alleged office romance,” your only real option is to hire Gwyneth. If anyone knows how to bounce back from public drama with polished cheekbones and vagina scented candles, it’s Gwyneth.
