Viral Coldplay Kiss Cam Couple Now Stars In A Video Game

The Coldplay concertgoers who sparked an online frenzy this week with their stunned reaction to getting caught cuddling on a jumbotron keep plunging deeper into internet infamy. In addition to spawning countless memes, they’re now starring in a video game called “Coldplay Canoodlers” styled after a retro 16-bit title.

“You’re the camera operator and you have to find the CEO and HR lady canoodling,” Jonathan Mann, the game’s creator, wrote on X. “Ten points every time you find them.”

In case you’ve completely avoided social media the last few days and don’t know which CEO and HR lady Mann is referring to, here’s a quick primer. Footage projected on a giant screen at a Foxborough, Massachusetts, Coldplay concert on Wednesday night captured a happy-looking couple, the man embracing the woman as they swayed to the music. But as soon as the pair spotted themselves in the footage, they separated and tried to hide. She covered her face with her hands and turned her back to the camera, he dove out of frame.

The reaction was so theatrical, Coldplay lead singer Chris Martin even delivered commentary from the stage. “Oh, look at these two. Either they’re having an affair or they’re just very shy,” Martin joked.

After a TikTok user reposted the footage — as of this writing, it has been viewed more than 92 million times — Internet sleuths quickly outed the pair as Andy Byron, CEO of software startup Astronomer, and Kristin Cabot, the company’s chief people officer overseeing human resources. Byron is married, but not to Cabot, and she is his employee. The New York-based data infrastructure company has launched a formal investigation and placed Byron on leave.

“Our leaders are expected to set the standard in both conduct and accountability,” the company said in a LinkedIn statement.

It’s a messy situation, to say the least, characterized by the kind of personal drama and over-the-top antics tailor made for meme enthusiasts, especially those reveling in schadenfreude watching an allegedly cheating spouse get caught and publicly shamed. All over the internet, people are recreating the couple’s snuggle-and-duck routine.

“I wanted to see how fast I could vibe code a simple game based on a viral moment,” Mann wrote on X on Friday morning.

What Is Vibe Coding?

Vibe coding refers to writing software with the help of large language models. Andrej Karpathy, a former head of AI at Tesla and an ex-researcher at OpenAI,  coined the term in a social media post to describe a style of coding “where you fully give in to the vibes, embrace exponentials and forget that the code even exists.” In essence, vibe coding focuses on the “vibe” of the software more than the code.

Mann used ChatGPT to make the “Coldplay Canoodlers” game, inputting such prompts as: “Can you generate an 8-bit pixel image of a stadium concert viewed from the stage” and “there should be a large jumbotron somewhere up in the stadium seats.” He also entered rough drawings of the visual style he envisioned.

A songwriter who lives in Hartford, Connecticut, Mann is best known as the “Song a Day Guy” for writing daily tunes and posting them to his social media accounts and YouTube channel, where has almost 75,000 subscribers. He’s been posting songs daily for 17 years now, with some of them commenting on news events or notable figures.

This is the second game Mann has vibe-coded. The first celebrated his 6,000th daily composition. “Coldplay Canoodlers” is no “Elder Scrolls” or “Red Dead Redemption” — all you have to do it is move your mouse to search the digital crowd and hold the target for a second to win the points. But the game highlights, yet again, the internet’s unmatched ability to create a global spectacle at lightning speed.

The response to the game, he said in an interview, has been unexpected. “I have gone viral many times with my songs,” he said. It’s “very strange to have it happen with a game I made in four hours.”