Kellie Walenciak: Ignore the Coldplay kiss cam
Originally published on the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
I didn’t want to look at the Coldplay kiss cam clip. But of course I did. It was like driving by a car accident. You know you shouldn’t stare, but something in you still slows down.
I’m married. So naturally, my first thoughts went to the people not in the video: their spouses, maybe even kids. Some couples break under the weight of infidelity. Others survive it and come out stronger. I’m not here to judge that.
But from a business standpoint, there’s no ambiguity: it’s unethical. You cannot have your CEO and Chief People Officer in a romantic relationship and expect to keep your credibility or your job.
What came after
Still, what really caught my attention wasn’t the kiss cam itself. It was what came after.
We didn’t just share the clip. We dissected it, mocked it, created memes, and crafted hot takes. We debated the optics, ethics, and the likely fallout. We treated it like it was our own workplace scandal. Somewhere along the line, we stopped reacting to the story and started performing our reactions to it.
I saw one business leader share a photo of himself alongside a cropped screenshot of the couple. The accompanying post wasn’t about the story but about him, specifically, his integrity, happy marriage, and brand.
He used someone else’s personal and professional unraveling as a mirror to admire himself. That’s not thought leadership. That’s opportunism dressed as virtue.
We’ve built a whole economy around public missteps. Someone stumbles, and suddenly the rest of us are on stage performing our superiority. We rush to say, “I’d never do that” because it earns us clicks, validation and digital applause. We’ve started confusing visibility with values, and instead of listening, we compete to see who can condemn the loudest.
It’s not that people shouldn’t be held accountable. Of course, they should. Especially people in power. And especially when their actions betray trust or cross ethical lines.
But accountability and humiliation are not the same thing. And the latter — this reflexive rush to public shaming — has become our default mode.
Judgment circles back
Working for a second-chance company, I’ve seen what redemption really looks like. I’ve also seen what it costs.
A single bad choice doesn’t define any of the incarcerated women I work with. They’re defined by how they rebuild afterward: how they own their past and fight for a future.
Nobody benefits from being flattened into a cautionary tale or an Internet punchline. We’re more complicated than our worst moment, and more deserving than the comment sections often allow.
No one should be used as a backdrop for someone else’s moral superiority. If you think you’re somehow above making mistakes like these, you might not want to get too comfortable. Judgment is like a boomerang. It has a way of circling back and hitting us square in the face.
What happened this week reminded me how far we’ve drifted from compassion. Social media used to be a place to connect. Now it feels like a contest—who can react fastest, harshest, and with the most self-congratulatory flair. Everything seems to become a chance to polish our image.
We’ve lost empathy. We’ve lost proportion. And maybe most of all, we’ve lost perspective.
The best public response
Not every trending story is your personal branding opportunity. Not every headline needs your hot take. And not every public failure is an invitation to mount your high horse and gallop through LinkedIn.
Sometimes the best public response is no public response. Compassion can be a silent, non-judgmental observation. There’s strength in restraint. And there’s dignity in letting someone else’s pain be what it is—painful—without trying to turn it into content.
Because in the end, the real test isn’t how we react to someone’s worst moment. It’s whether we use it to elevate ourselves or have the decency to just let it pass.
