I still feel bad about watching the Coldplay “kiss cam” video.
After the woman who was caught in the embarrassing moment spoke this week about harassment she endured when the video went viral over the summer … well, I think we should all feel bad.
This wasn’t any of our business. And our reaction to the video says a lot more about us, and about online culture, than it could ever say about the people who were filmed embracing.
I think we can agree that a potential romance between a CEO and an underling isn’t appropriate. But the extreme reactions to the video — being doxxed, getting 500 to 600 calls a day, and 50 to 60 death threats, she told The New York Times — weren’t about workplace conduct or potential relationship transgressions.
Kristin Cabot also spoke to the Times of London this week. She told the newspaper that she might have understood all the attention had she been famous. “But I’m not some celebrity, I’m just a mom from New Hampshire,” she told the newspaper. “Even if I did have an affair, it’s not anybody’s business.”
Exactly. Everyone, chill. Don’t find some random person on the internet and call them at home and yell at them. Come on.
When it comes to the idea of the internet doxxing and harassing people, we imagine something like 4chan, or some anonymous sinister force victimizing some innocent person for political or ideological reasons. But what Cabot is describing isn’t 4chan trolls. It’s people at her local grocery store, and people willing to say mean things using their real names and faces.
There’s a long history of “the internet” grabbing onto some viral moment with a stranger and hanging them out to dry. Think of “West Elm Caleb,” a man whom several women on TikTok realized they had all met on dating apps. Or “Couch Guy,” a young man who TikTok was convinced was cheating on his girlfriend in a viral video. Online mobs doxxed and harassed them in real life.
What always felt off to me about the “kiss cam” story was that, sure, it was a funny little viral moment. Haha. I watched it and thought it was amusing for a second. But the way it blew up got weird. It became a big national news story. (We covered it at Business Insider, and I wrote about it, too.) It should’ve been a gag for 2 hours; instead, it made headlines for days.
We should feel bad that this got so out of control! Yes, I laughed at the video. No, I didn’t feel compelled to use facial recognition software to identify the people in it, nor did I tweet at them or call them at home. But some jerks actually did that! And my harmless chuckling eventually led to a cascade of real-world harm to someone who didn’t live a public life and whose crime was a dismissible case of misdemeanor canoodling.
In the interview with The New York Times, Cabot talks about how she’s taken accountability for her actions and accepted the consequences of losing her job. We, the internet mob, should do the same: take accountability for being a small part of something that snowballed way out of control.
If you find yourself fiending for a healthy outlet for messy gossip and drama that you can yell about online, there is an endless buffet for you awaiting on Bravo and ESPN. Let 2026 find you at peace.
