The Corporate Team-Building Exercise Award goes to the Coldplay Kisscam Couple

SINGAPORE – The next time you call K-dramas cheesy and unrealistic, consider this award winner.

Its synopsis would read like this: She was his employee. He was a rich, handsome chief executive. Their paths crossed and – despite both being married – her heart wanted what it wanted, and so did his.

But it all fell apart at a concert when a pop star’s “bit” created a moment of physical comedy that would break not just the internet, but also careers and marriages.

If this were a K-drama, the only missing element would be the wronged woman plotting in the background, pulling the strings that would expose the affair in the most public way possible.

It all happened in July, when Ms Kristin Cabot, chief people officer (head of human resources, for those who do not speak American) was

caught snuggling on camera

with her company’s chief executive, Mr Andy Byron, at a Coldplay concert.

When the couple noticed they were on the stadium’s big screen, their decoupling was so comically abrupt that it led the British rock band’s frontman Chris Martin to say: “They’re either having an affair or they’re very shy.”

His first guess was correct. As internet sleuths dug deeper, it got juicier.

Mr Byron was a Silicon Valley tech guy heading a billion-dollar company, while Ms Cabot was his employee. Not only that, but she was also the head of the department who warns employees against doing what she was caught doing on the stadium screen.

With so many red lines crossed, a diagram of the event would look like a crimson sunset.

In the aftermath, two viewpoints emerged. One was that the privacy of these two people, no matter how messy, should have not been violated by the internet mob.

The other was that the cheaters deserved their outcomes. This camp argues that society now treats everything as fodder for TikTok and Instagram. Suffer an embarrassing moment in public and phones will be whipped out, forever changing the lives of those under the lens.

This award marks the event that made a kisscam moment a global phenomenon, but it is also a eulogy for another time, before cameras and Instagram made forbidden kisses public entertainment.