After Coldplaygate, the world of moral lynchings

Are we done with our thin-lipped moralising over what some are calling Coldplaygate?

- Namita Bhandare

You do know what I'm talking about, the video of the man and woman, he's got her in a tight cinch at the Coldplay concert in Boston? As the camera zooms in, voila, they're on the giant screen and it's their reaction, instinctive and visceral that makes the moment viral. He ducks, she covers her face. Uh-oh! Busted. Lead singer Chris Martin catches on: “Either they're having an affair or they're just very shy.” In no time at all they've been ‘outed as Andy Byron, the married CEO of tech startup Astronomer, and Kristin Cabot, the company’s HR manager, also married, just not to him.

It's Armageddon on the internet. Memes, jokes, OMGs, instant wisdom, and a near universal finger-wagging. Within days Byron puts in his papers, reportedly Cabot follows later, but the tut-tutting continues. On Etsy, “I took my sidepiece to the Coldplay concert” T-shirts go on sale. Leave aside the sexism of “sidepiece”, a country that has only months ago elected a legally defined sexual predator is now expressing horror at the moral lapse. Who would have thought?