Before you start reading this, did you know you can listen to it on Spotify and iTunes? Click over and subscribe and save time by listening in the car or while doing the laundry.
This week we saw a CEO Andy Byron caught cheating at a Coldplay concert, and then we saw the internet blow up with memes and jokes making further spectacle of him. My teens even got it on their feeds and asked me if I had seen it.
Day 1-2, I watched video after video replaying the clip of the pair quickly splitting from an embrace as they realized their cozy moment was now being witnessed by the entire stadium—and beyond. But I doubt they knew in the moment how far that footage would reach and what would be made of it.
The next few days I saw more commentary, parody, and memes, including several AI generated videos, one depicting Byron threatening to sue because he’d been outed without consent, and others depicting fictional characters and brand mascots “cheating” with each other in the same way.
But yesterday, only a few days into this saga, I saw the first discussion of putting a lid on it all. It started with a facebook post from one of my old colleagues, a white Christian man, who said, “Can we please be done with the Coldplay thing now?”
And then a white woman on TikTok made a plea to drop the jokes because public shame was “chaos” and we need to stay focused on not letting America become the Soviet Union. The concern is valid in general, the country is in trouble, but it’s a stretch to apply it here, to say our political climate is threatened by a cheating CEO being publicly shamed. If anything, the public reaction to this is the result of a people on the edge of real revolution. We’re not holding back anymore and it’s a really good thing. Shining a light on the world around us and not pretending these things aren’t happening is how we make real change.
We’re not protecting a CEO anymore. We’re not sweeping him under a rug so he can get back to his big open office overlooking all the people he’s cheated (surely his wife is not the first). But this is what white America does. They tamp down events like this that involve prominent white men. Christians in particular will want to start keeping things hush in the name of “family values” because, as several comments on Facebook said, his wife and children are suffering the backlash.
But they’re not suffering backlash from the public. They’re suffering abuse, the abuse of a father and husband who destroyed his family. It’s blame shifting to put it on the public. It’s further removing the focus and accountability from this man to everyone else who is holding a mirror to him and what he did. And this is where we do injustice to women and children in these situations.
For the last few days, beneath the public cheers and jeers all over social media, have been quiet comments from women who’ve been cheated on. These women have been telling their stories. Stories about being discarded, not being believed, and never allowed the chance to really grieve the loss of their marriage properly. In most cases, these women weren’t allowed to acknowledge it was cheating because by the time they’re ready to talk about it, their husband has already told everyone, “We just grew apart.” This becomes the narrative. He didn’t do anything wrong, and in fact, she was actually a nag who controlled him, withheld sex, etc., and he had to find comfort elsewhere.
Women are forced to stuff their feelings away and never publicly acknowledge the damage their husband did. But this time, this woman doesn’t have to do that. This woman is going to be devastated for a long time no matter what the public says or does, but she has something a lot of other women never have. She has public support from millions of people who are on her side.
So I say we let it play out. Let this woman have a few minutes of vindication from the world, to validate her and strengthen her through this traumatic betrayal. Let Christians sit in the discomfort of yet another white man being atrocious and having to face himself publicly. As we say often in DV circles, “If he didn’t want people to talk about what he did, he shouldn’t have done it.”
Follow me on TikTok or Instagram for more, and subscribe here for more in-depth writing based on conversations from social media.
Music I’ve been listening to this week
For newcomers, I hope you enjoyed this post! At the end I’ll often include music I’ve been listening to or songs I’ve used in TikTok videos, and sometimes a poem from my book if it’s applicable. There’s also a chat room for each post if you’d like to engage in further conversation on these topics.
Share this post