This Week

The Coldplay affair heard ’round the world.

The shocking Stephen Colbert news.

The week’s best social media trend.

The feud I can’t believe is back.

A cranky journalism rant.

SPOILER ALERT: the Daily Beast Obsessed newsletter is now a subscriber exclusive. If you are not an active subscriber and want to avoid newsletter cliffhangers, join here to read this week's full send–and all future sends. If you're already an active subscriber, you're all set! Thank you for supporting the Daily Beast.

What Were These People Thinking?

A billionaire tech CEO and his head of HR were outed for their alleged affair on the jumbotron of a Coldplay concert. That is the most heterosexual nonsense I’ve ever heard.

As has gone viral a million times over in a matter of days—to the giggling glee of us ingrates on the internet—during a Coldplay concert in Foxborough, Massachusetts (home of the stadium where the New England Patriots play and marriages are destroyed), what seemed to be a loving couple was beamed onto the venue’s giant screen.

He was cradling her from behind. She was nestled into his chest. They swayed lovingly. Then they noticed they were on camera, and the vibe didn’t so much shift as much as it peeled off like a F1 racecar in the opposite direction.

He stopped, dropped, and rolled like he was participating in an elementary school demonstration of what to do if you catch on fire. She turned her back to the camera, employing the classic delusional move: “If I can’t see them, maybe they can’t see me.” Coldplay lead singer Chris Martin quipped from the stage: “Either they’re having an affair or they’re very shy.”

The clip was posted online, and the internet sprang into action and did its thing: The “couple” was immediately identified as Andrew Byron, CEO of tech company Astronomer, and Kristin Cabot, the “Chief People’s Officer” (aka head of HR). Digital sleuths also discovered that each appears to be married to other people—hence Byron’s attempt to crash through the back wall like the Kool-Aid Man and flee the situation.

It led to a banner day in the world of 2025’s internet. Memes and jokes rained down like comedic manna from heaven. (Let’s face it, how often these days are we united on social media about news that makes us laugh instead of scream from the depths of our soul?)

The fun then led to buzzkill (though valid!) discourse about privacy and surveillance. And through all of it, I think we can glean a few lessons:

Social media can never go away because it’s where the funniest people alive are working their magic.

You have to be pretty rich and entitled to think that you can be the head of a company worth over a billion dollars and openly engage in an affair in front of 70,000 people—including your coworkers—and not get caught. (In other words: F--- around, and find out.)

At this point, when you’re in public, your privacy is gone.

And finally: Being a Coldplay fan can ruin a person’s life.

Poor Coldplay seems to be collateral damage in this media frenzy, catching strays from cynics and haters mocking how embarrassing it is to be at a Coldplay concert in the first place—let alone have an affair exposed there.

Daily Beast subscribers get unlimited access to the Obsessed newsletter and exclusive entertainment reporting from the Daily Beast.

Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here.