Unless you have spent the past four days on the bottom of the ocean or hiding under a rock (both of which sound like pretty good options to me right now), you have no doubt encountered the Coldplay Jumbotron meme on social media or through breathless coverage on mainstream media. The ubiquity of this meme and the inevitable social media commentary is such that I do not need to delve into the sordid details on this esteemed blog. Suffice it to say, a private moment became very public, very quickly, and pretty much everyone on the Internet has a thought about it. Of course I am no exception, so I offer a few reflections on the situation here:

1. This situation is just the latest example of why no one should have any expectation of privacy in any public place. Every single person around you has in their possession sophisticated recording equipment and a platform to reach pretty much most people around the world, not to mention the extraordinary surveillance infrastructure that now exists everywhere that we go (including, apparently, arena kiss cams). It boggles one’s mind as to how anyone would still think in 2025 that their every move is not being surveilled and tracked in multiple ways from a variety of different perspectives. This surveillance environment is now just a part of daily life, because we ceded our anonymity and privacy to the convenience of technology.

2. I can still recall a time not so long ago when the players in this sort of drama may have gotten away without a scratch, simply because their identifies would not have been known to the world. But we now live in a culture where individuals are identified by the social media horde within minutes using facial recognition and the vast quantity of personal information available on the Internet, and no one has any qualms about calling others out to the world. Sometimes this can be a good thing, and sometimes this can have unfortunate consequences. Unfortunately, we lack any sort of moderating influence in these situations.

3. The level of misinformation about everything, including Coldplay Jumbotron dramas, is incredibly high and only getting worse. As this meme cut a path through social media and mainstream media like Haley’s Comet, all manner of misinformation was reported, ranging from a faked statement from an individual involved to the misidentification of persons depicted in the video. If you are a company or individual involved in a situation like this, it is really hard to “control the narrative” in the face of an avalanche of misinformation.

4. A key takeaway from this unfortunate series of events is that private companies need good governance just as much as public companies do. A public relations nightmare involving a CEO or other senior executive is just one of the many things that a board of directors needs to consider and be prepared for, whether or not the board is accountable to private or public shareholders. Having a clear code of conduct and an emergency succession plan are two things that both private and public companies should have in place for these types of events.

Let’s hope that this was our big meme event for the Summer of 2025 and we don’t need to be revisiting these points anytime soon.

– Dave Lynn