Coldplay’s kissing couple just hard launched Jerry Springer: LinkedIn
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a good “Chief People Officer” to accompany him to a Coldplay concert.
So why are we all laughing at Andy Byron, the married chief executive of Astronomer, which was until now a little known software development company?
Well he’s just displayed Michael Scott levels of corporate and personal stupidity by canoodling with a colleague at a concert that features a “kiss cam”.
The bloke and the outfit’s HR boss, Kristin Cabot, have just ushered in the era of Jerry Springer for the LinkedIn generation.
It’s a plot not even the satirical series The Office could conjure.
“Oh, what!” Chris Martin said at the band’s Boston show this week. “Either they’re having an affair or they’re very shy.”
The status of their relationship is not known. However, given he dropped to his knees to avoid Coldplay’s camera at the speed of sound and she shied away from the glare of the big screen quicker than Gout Gout in the 100m, you don’t have to be Nancy Drew to deduce that it didn’t exactly scream “Look at the stars, look how they shine for you” froth and fervour, did it?
There is also a certain level of irony that all this played out in Martin’s arena, the bloke who coined the phrase “conscious uncoupling” when he separated from his former wife Gwyneth Paltrow.
Since the clip has gone more viral than Covid, there are reports Mr Byron’s wife removed her husband’s name from her Facebook profile before deleting it entirely. Meanwhile, other online sleuths are saying the woman standing next to the pair and laughing in the Jumbotron shot was recently promoted at Astronomer.
Lovers or not, this incident in an age where we’re all monitored and monitoring everything from our cycles to our cycle routes, is the romantic version of being hacked.
Not on the scale of Qantas or Optus, more “click here to claim your $350bn Lotto prize” from an unknown number.
Smartphone technology has really made seemingly smart people, like Mr Byron and Ms Cabot, so much dumber.
Cuddling a colleague at a gig like this, where it’s well known audience members are scouted to be serenaded by the band and beamed out to the wider, iPhone wielding audience, is like scanning a couple of avocados at Coles and trying to tell the self-service check out you’re just adding a brown onion to cart.
It also makes a mockery of all the hand wringing going on in C-suites around the world.
In a time where workplace conduct has never been more scrutinised, “power imbalances” have become HR buzzwords and bosses around the world are demanding everyone return to the office, this situation is all the ammunition worker bees who enjoy remote work need to retort: “Nah, I’m happy to log on from home, not star on Love Island: Let’s Circle Back”.
Regulators need to follow the commission trail to protect Australians
Politicians have conceived bodies and acts of Parliament to minimise consumer investment losses. All contributed to a better investment community, but none of them were able to stop consumers being defrauded.
Sorry, votes for the kids won’t help democracy
Adding 16-year-olds to the electoral roll speeds up the transfer of political legitimacy from those with judgment tempered by experience to those still untouched by let-downs and contradiction.