Woman from Coldplay kiss cam blasts Gwyneth Paltrow. Was the mocking too much?
Woman from Coldplay kiss cam blasts Gwyneth Paltrow. Was the mocking too much?
Sara Moniuszko and David Oliver, USA TODAYWed, March 18, 2026 at 2:22 PM UTC
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Woman from Coldplay kiss cam blasts Gwyneth Paltrow. Was the mocking too much?
Kristin Cabot, one half of the "Coldplay Kiss Cam" incident, is blasting Gwyneth Paltrow and others who capitalized on the viral moment, saying they did so without thinking about how the added attention impacted the lives of those involved.
"In the initial moments, I'm sure it was funny to people. I can appreciate that," Cabot said on "The Oprah Podcast" on March 17. "I just don't think people really stop and think about there's real humans behind this and it is incredibly destructive."
Media and psychology experts say it’s not uncommon to obsess over others’ cringey moments and mistakes because it makes us feel better about ourselves. It’s a phenomenon called schadenfreude − when we find pleasure, joy and satisfaction in others’ troubles, failures or pain − that ultimately reveals more about us than them.
"We like watching people make this climb to wealth and status, but once they actually get there, one of the only narrative threads left is to watch them fall," Robert Thompson, founding director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at the Newhouse School of Public Communications Syracuse University, previously told USA TODAY. "We do get a lot of schadenfreude pleasure out of that if you look at a lot of the examples of stories we tell."
Cabot said she specifically found Paltrow's involvement in the uproar "really disappointing." The actress and businesswoman made a mock ad as the “temporary spokesperson” of Astronomer, the tech company that employed Cabot at the time.
“I felt like Gwyneth − someone whose company is founded on or framed around uplifting women and women’s well-being − she doesn't need the money; I don’t know why she felt she needed to throw gas on the fire and get involved in all of this. It just felt really hypocritical to me and unnecessary," Cabot said.
Another psychological theory beyond schadenfreude, called "social comparison," can explain our love for this type of drama, Elizabeth Cohen, associate professor at West Virginia University, previously told USA TODAY.
Downward social comparison is when you consume media solely to look down on others, a behavior that tends to dominate the social media landscape.
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“Social media activity is an endless repeating cycle of controversy, outrage and our sacred right to say whatever we want about whoever we want with no consequences,” David Schmid, an associate professor of English at the University at Buffalo, previously told USA TODAY. “Once we've chewed (a person) up and spat them out, we'll move to someone else, and so it goes on, ad nauseam, at a pace dictated by our ever-shrinking attention span.”
Ryan Reynolds was also involved in the ad, which was posted to Astronomer's social media channels.
“He produced the ad, he created it and his wife has just gone through something really similar over the last year,” Cabot said, referencing Blake Lively's lengthy legal battle with Justin Baldoni. “I find it really kind of astounding that he thought this was a great way to lead.”
During the interview, Winfrey said Paltrow told her she only did the ad because she was told Cabot signed off on it, and that "she wouldn’t have done it” if that wasn’t the case. Cabot said she didn't sign off.
While gossip is inevitable, experts say it's better for people to focus their energy on positive rather than negative messaging, Erica Chito-Childs, Dean of the Ruth and Harold Newman School of Arts and Sciences at Hunter College, previously told USA TODAY.
"When you're engaging more of this hypercritical speculation on people's lives, who you don't even know, whether it's celebrities, or it's your neighbors, it's having the same impact," Chito-Childs explained. "It's a negative thing."
Contributing: Katie Camero, USA TODAY
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Coldplay kiss cam scandal, Gwyneth Paltrow and when jokes go too far
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
