Every now and then a story comes along that looks, at first glance, like nothing more than a modern curiosity – a fleeting moment caught on camera, shared online, and then forgotten as the next spectacle rolls along.
Except sometimes the person in the video doesn’t get to forget.
That is the situation facing Kristin Cabot, a 53-year-old American executive whose life was turned upside down after a brief moment on a stadium screen at a Coldplay concert went spectacularly viral.
Cabot, then the head of human resources at the technology start-up Astronomer, appeared on the venue’s “kiss-cam” during a concert in Boston’s Gillette Stadium.
On the giant screen she was shown in an intimate embrace with the company’s chief executive, Andy Byron.
The moment lasted just 16 seconds.
But the internet, as we have learned, can stretch 16 seconds into something that feels like eternity.
The clip was posted on social media and rapidly exploded across platforms such as TikTok, eventually racking up more than a billion views.
Within days Cabot had stepped down from her role. And the fallout, she says, has not stopped.
@thetimes Kristin Cabot, whose life was upended after she was filmed cuddling her boss on a “kisscam” at a Coldplay concert, has accused technology companies of “feeding off the pain” of victims of viral moments. Cabot stepped down from her role as head of human resources at the technology startup Astronomer last July after a video of her in an intimate embrace with the chief executive, Andy Byron, was shared on TikTok. With more than a billion online views, that moment became one of the most viral of 2025. She spoke this week on Oprah Winfrey’s podcast, which she said would be her only on-camera interview. 📸 The Oprah Podcast #coldplaykisscam #kisscamlady #kisscamhr
In an interview on Oprah Winfrey’s podcast — her only planned on-camera conversation about the incident — Cabot spoke candidly about the experience and what it revealed about the darker mechanics of online attention.
“I had no concept of this before,” she told Winfrey. “When something goes this viral, how technology companies are benefiting from this.”
According to Cabot, the very systems that push viral moments to the top of our feeds are also quietly turning human embarrassment and distress into profit.
“We don’t realise when we’re forwarding and liking and clicking that we’re putting billions of dollars in their pockets,” she said. “The more pain someone like me is in, the more money they’re going to make.”
It is a sobering thought.
For many viewers the moment may have felt like a harmless piece of internet theatre — something to watch, comment on, and move past. But for the person at the centre of the frame, the consequences have been much more personal.
Cabot told interviewers she received hundreds of phone calls a day in the weeks after the video spread online, including threats and relentless harassment. She said she has struggled to find work since the scandal erupted.
And then there was the commentary.
Social media, as it so often does, quickly sorted itself into sides. But the language directed at Cabot was often strikingly vicious.
She was labelled a “homewrecker”, a “gold digger” and worse — insults that she believes revealed something deeper about how public judgement tends to fall.
“It was very gendered,” she explained in earlier comments about the incident.
In the Oprah interview, however, Cabot’s reflections moved beyond the technology companies or even the scandal itself. Instead, she turned her attention to a more uncomfortable question.
Why are we so quick to attack each other?
“I’m heartbroken at how women are treating other women,” she said.
It is the sort of observation that lands with quiet weight.
Because while the internet certainly amplifies outrage, the voices creating that outrage are not machines. They are us.
Cabot admitted she still thinks about the moment every day and often asks herself why it happened.
“I’m trying to figure out why we’re eating each other alive,” she told Winfrey. “Why do we take such joy in seeing other people suffer?”
There was no attempt to excuse the circumstances that led to the viral moment. Instead, she suggested the experience might serve as a kind of cautionary tale about the culture we have collectively built online.
“I do believe I got knocked off my course for a reason,” she said.
Her hope now is that the conversation might shift — away from the spectacle of the moment and toward a more thoughtful discussion about empathy, accountability and the curious power of algorithms.
After all, a video may last 16 seconds.
But the consequences can echo much longer.
And perhaps Cabot’s final reflection — about women showing kindness to other women — is the quietest and most important lesson in the entire episode.
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