Why are we so fascinated by the Coldplay cam couple? It's about us, not them

Jessica Ciencin Henriquez


The public shaming won’t bring real justice. But it fulfills a fantasy of accountability we rarely experience in our own lives

It wasn’t just that a man got caught cheating on his wife. It was that he did it in public. With the whole stadium watching. With Chris Martin, unknowingly, teeing it up. With a camera zooming in at the exact wrong – or maybe karmically perfect – moment. The CEO. The HR director. The affair. The panic. The humiliation. All of it caught, dissected and shared a million times over.

We didn’t watch that video because we love Coldplay (though, don’t we?). We didn’t watch just for the scandal. We watched because – despite our small steps toward enlightenment – we’re all starving for the satisfaction of seeing someone finally get what they deserve.

That’s the part we need to talk about.

According to a 2023 study in Computers in Human Behavior Reports, the satisfaction we feel during public shaming isn’t just about justice – it’s about pleasure. Their research found that people experience schadenfreude not only because they believe the person deserved it, but because it simply feels good to watch someone face consequences. We’re not just looking for moral clarity. We’re chasing the emotional high that comes with it. We don’t just want closure, we want content. And cheating, exposed in public, has become the most satisfying genre of all.

We as a culture are obsessed with catching cheaters – not just for the drama, but for the justice. We want to see betrayal punished. We want the liar exposed, the philanderer humiliated, the partner who was faithful and trusting to be vindicated. And if we can’t get that in our own lives, we’ll take it from strangers.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jul/23/coldplay-cam-concert-public-shaming

Lotta truth in this.