July 23, 2025 • 16 mins
Seventy thousand five hundred twenty-one.
That’s how many news stories included Andy Byron’s name after one juicy Jumbotron moment at a Coldplay concert. In this episode of The PR Breakdown, dissecting how a viral moment spiraled into a corporate PR disaster that exposed a CEO, an HR chief, and a total breakdown in communication control.
What made this story explode? Not just the video, but the silence that followed a hoax.
Molly breaks down the viral ingredients:
- A real-life HR entanglement caught on camera
- Fake apologies and fake wife statements
- A tech company scrambling to fact-check a fake statement
- And a resignation that came too late to stop the damage
It’s a live case study in digital PR failure, and a warning for anyone who thinks “it will pass" is a good crisis response strategy in 2025.
Mentioned in the episode:
- "Astronomer finally releases a statement." - @MollyBMcPherson, TikTok, July 17, 2025
- "When national television outlets ask for comment before the Novocaine wears off." - @MollyBMcPherson, TikTok, July 16, 2025
- "TikTok-famous PR strategist accurately predicts outcome of Coldplay CEO fiasco." - @MollyBMcPherson, TikTok, July 16, 2025
- TikTok-famous PR strategist accurately predicts outcome of Coldplay CEO fiasco - Fox News, July 19, 2025
- "Tell-tale signs for spotting a fake press or media statement. PR lessons from the fake "Andy Byron" and "Megyn Byron" statements." - @MollyBMcPherson, TikTok, July 22, 2025
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Molly McPherson (00:00):
70,521.
That's the number of newsarticles that included the name
Andy Byron in the past weekalone.
And if you're wondering how atech CEO ended up in a meme with
Coldplay no, I'm not even goingto say that, of course.
You know how a CEO ended up ina meme with Coldplay lyrics and
(00:20):
a ParityX account named PeterEnnis.
You are not alone.
Welcome to the PR Breakdown.
I'm your host, molly McPherson,and this episode is about that
concert, that Kiss Cam videothat turned into an internet
feeding frenzy, and what happenswhen a name and a face and
(00:43):
silence goes viral.
I'm still laughing.
Let's break it down.
The scene.
Foxborough, or many of you mayknow it as Gillette Stadium in
Massachusetts.
It was a Coldplay concert, onethat I wish I went to.
It was a packed house, on theJumbotron, a man and a woman,
(01:05):
the man's arm around a woman.
I'm laughing because I'mthinking of every meme out there
.
You know what I think?
My favorite meme of all was thePhillies, the Philly fanatic,
(01:26):
the Philly fanatic I don't evenknow.
The female fanatic I'm a RedSox fan, so I don't even know.
I don't know what her name is.
They recreated the moment whereAndy Byron's arm was around his
chief people officer, kristenCabot.
Both, as we know, are currentlyreportedly married to other
people.
We all know that moment right,the moment where they split.
(01:49):
On a Substack Live that I gavelast Friday, one of the things
that I focused on and otherpeople were talking about as
well, is what happened themoment of recognition that they
saw their faces in the jumbotron.
Cabot immediately felt shame,but Andy Byron he ducked and
that says everything about thatguy.
(02:11):
More on that guy in a moment.
By the next morning I did somequick, sloppy math.
I was looking at 34 millionviews on the original TikTok
post, but that number 70,521,that's a number I called up.
Today, thanks to Muckrack, anew supporter to the podcast, I
(02:31):
now have a PR platform thatgives me all the news stories I
need right at my fingertips, andthis story had everything
Howard Dynamics after all, hewas a CEO and he hired her Also
HR entanglement, a Coldplaysoundtrack and a fake CEO
(02:52):
statement with zero publicstatement from Astronomer, the
company that the Knudelers bothwork for Now.
Thankfully, this viral crisiswas not known as Cold Playgate,
though some people were tryingto make Fetch happen there, but
it really didn't need a name.
All it needed was the clip andthere were plenty of social
(03:14):
media threads, reddit theories,instagram memes the whole
machine turned on.
This led to a story blowing upto even bigger proportions.
The reason why is because no onespoke.
Byron Cabot they didn't speak.
It's not expected for them tospeak, but they didn't say
anything.
But the company didn't sayanything either.
On a TikTok post from last week, I mentioned that if I were
(03:38):
brought in to do crisismanagement for the company
Astronomer, I would advise tonot send out a statement right
away, even when the story wasgoing viral, because the first
statement needed to be to a keystakeholder and that was
internal.
The staff needed to know whatwas going on, because all the
young Gen Z staffers were allover this first.
There is no doubt in my mindthat this went viral, probably
(04:01):
on a Slack channel before it gotto the board of directors.
It was up to astronomerleadership, key leadership.
They're a privately heldcompany backed by private equity
.
There are no shareholders inthere, but they did have a board
and they needed to make adecision right away.
They let it go too long.
Ideally, what you want to do isyou want to make that HR
decision right away, so you canmake that public statement,
(04:22):
because the fact that it is acompany with investors, it has
customers, it has keystakeholders.
There needs to be a publicstatement because people want to
know what's happening.
But because it was private andthere was no statement yet, I
didn't say anything.
That's the reason why I didn'thop on TikTok or social media to
(04:42):
give my two cents, even thoughI was getting lots of requests,
not only from friends andcolleagues and people who work
in the biz and the media biz,but from a lot of reporters as
well.
I had crazy reach out from thepress, most notably late
afternoon from a nationalmorning television program, also
a national syndicatedtelevision program, another
(05:04):
morning show outlet.
They all wanted me to give acomment and I still didn't feel
comfortable doing it becausethere wasn't an official
statement yet from Astronomerand I just felt like I was
feeding the beast at that point.
But another reason why Icouldn't speak is because I
literally could not speak.
I had a dentist appointment inthe early afternoon.
I had to get Novocaine andbecause I'm a baby, at the
(05:24):
dental office my dentist gave meeven more Novocaine.
So my mouth was drooping a bit.
Even if I wanted to go on air,I couldn't.
Even if I wanted to do a longTikTok, I couldn't do that
because I couldn't move my mouth.
But a reason why I get thesemedia outlets, why I couldn't do
a press statement as well, isbecause I had a hair appointment
and I said I made thisappointment months ago.
I can't cancel it.
(05:45):
And I thought, gosh, the MollyMcPherson of 10 years ago, 15
years ago, geez, of two yearsago, thinking of turning down
morning television because I hada hair appointment.
Now why do I bring up this hairappointment?
It actually pertains to thestory.
If you listened to my SubstackLive last Friday, you heard me
explain the story of visiting myhairstylist that night.
(06:07):
Because when I first walked inI said to Jess hey, just so you
know, I canceled the interviewon this program because I needed
to keep my appointment with you.
And she's like, really why?
What was the story?
Here are the inside baseballstories that happened when I was
at the salon.
First, my stylist tells me, oneof the stylists went to
(06:27):
Gillette.
Then because, as a favor to hisbuddy, another stylist who does
all the artist's hair when theyappear at Foxborough needed the
help.
The guy from the salon didChris Martin's hair that night
and stayed there and saw thejumbotron.
I was like what?
I'm on my Substack in mycommunity in the thread chatting
kind of real time with everyoneand my Substack boy do they
(06:48):
deliver?
Because everybody just wentwhoop, they all jumped in so we
were having a great conversation.
It was fun.
Then my stylist says to me Jesssays oh my God, molly, you will
not believe this.
A client wrote her to say theywere with one of the two
canoodlers.
I don't want to say because Idon't want to give too much
(07:09):
there.
They were just with them likeon Monday night.
So this was Thursday night, sofour days earlier they were with
that person.
Of course I have to immediatelytell my Substack community what
was going on.
I love that.
Two people in the communitywere saying this is such a
Boston story.
And it really is a Boston story.
I said to the group I swear bythe end of the week I'm going to
(07:30):
be in the inner circle of thatstory.
After my appointment I get inthe car, I look on my phone and
there is my group text from mygirlfriends.
We're all headed to thevineyard this weekend for our
annual vineyard trip.
One of my friends in the groupsaid is anyone paying attention
to the CEO story with Coldplay?
Molly, you must be payingattention to it.
Then my friend goes on to saythat someone close to her, one
(07:55):
of the Knudler's siblings,wedding the weekend before and I
went, that's it, that's it.
I didn't even get home and I'malready in the inner circle.
My friend shared a lot ofinteresting details that frankly
track.
So I'm headed to the vineyardthis weekend.
So I'm definitely going to findout more Now.
Thanks to Angie she's a memberof my Substack community.
(08:17):
She sent a link to Men's HealthMagazine, I think it was, with
a response to the fake CEO postabout Andy Byard.
Astronomer finally startedcalling individual media outlets
to debunk that post and say itwas fake.
It took them all day to stopthe post.
That was the fatal mistake thatwas made by Astronomer.
(08:40):
I fully place the blame on them.
It's completely understandablethat it would take time to
decide what they were going todo with the CEO.
The concert only happened thenight before.
Maybe Andy Byron didn't evencome into the office, which I
think would be fair.
They would have to track himdown and talk to him and then
they had to decide what to do.
I'm going to give them thebenefit of a doubt that there
was an internal story and theyprobably were trying to hammer
(09:05):
out an exit deal with Andy Byron.
That's why it was so easy forme the next day just to make a
guess and say, hey, this guy'sgoing to be out by the end of
the week.
That's why Fox News they wroteme over the weekend asking if
they could use my TikTok andthey wanted a quote from me as
well, and I went.
I don't want to do that, butthey did me a solid and they
called well, kind of a solid.
(09:26):
They called me a TikTok.
Pr expert Molly McPhersonaccurately calls the fate of the
Coldplay CEO.
So I thank them for that.
But honestly, we all called it.
I read part of the astronomerstatement on a TikTok.
I really don't need to read itagain because it doesn't matter.
It's just typical corporatespeak.
(09:47):
There's nothing special abouttheir statement at all, except
for two things.
One, they outed the employeewho was supposedly seen in the
corporate box with Cabot andByron.
That employee was misidentifiedbecause everybody's profiles
were on LinkedIn and they couldgrab all that information.
People immediately associated agirl in the box who kind of
(10:08):
looked like an employee there.
Then this poor girl her namewent viral as well.
But the mistake that Astronomermade is they put her name in
the statement, so then they madeher go viral all over again.
Now they were trying to attemptto quell all the speculation
about her, but they didn't haveto say her name again.
So I think that was a mistakeand this statement, no surprise,
(10:30):
came out late on a Fridayafternoon and a summer afternoon
.
Let's talk about what was realand what wasn't.
We stated the long apologyattributed to Byron that
circulated wildly.
That was fake and really.
If you got to the point wherethe fake Andy Byron quoted
Coldplay's Fix you and ended thestatement with lights will
(10:54):
guide you.
Also the fake Facebookstatement from Byron's wife,
megan.
That was also fake.
I posted on TikTok I'll includelinks in the show note and I
explained why that post was fakeas well.
It was tied to a spoof accountand how we know that it was fake
.
It wasn't her account.
We all know her profile photobecause profile photos on
(11:18):
Facebook are public.
But also the writing was verysimilar to the fake Andy Byron
statement as well.
It was too lyrical, it was tooartificial.
I would bet anything.
It was written by AI.
Both statements had em dashesin it and I had some grammar
types come at me in my postsaying why are you saying that
(11:39):
em dashes are in AI and emdashes don't Like?
Okay, I get it.
No one loves an M-dash morethan me.
It's my favorite punctuation.
But ChatGPT does use M-dashes alot and I don't write in
M-dashes anymore.
I used to love M-dashes becausethey're so prevalent in
artificial intelligence-assistedlanguage.
(12:01):
It's also because it wasformatted poorly and it didn't
come from any verified source.
It didn't come from the press,it didn't come from a law office
or anything like that.
It just came from likeManhattan.
But there was a lack of intent.
There was the lack of why Like?
Why are we even getting thestatement?
The writing was to hook you, toget into the statement, to
share the statement, to engagewith the statement.
(12:22):
They wanted people to share thestatement and that's exactly
what happened.
The statements went viral.
The personal lesson from areputation point of view.
I mean look at Megan Byron.
Her name went viral.
This is a woman who did nothing.
She was sitting at home, not atColdplay, but her Facebook page
changed drastically Veryquickly.
(12:44):
We could see her reaction tothe crisis in real time.
First her married name wasdropped from Facebook because
likely Megan Byron was thinkingthis was a very personal crisis
for people who she knew like onFacebook.
But then she likely startedgetting inundated with press
calls and then made her Facebookpage go dark.
Of course, that leads to a lotof speculation.
Was she distancing herself?
(13:04):
Was she reacting privately?
Again, it's private, itshouldn't matter and, believe me
, journalists were workingovertime trying to verify all
this information.
I had some people online in thecomments saying this was a
media-generated story and theywere blaming the press and I
replied back no, this was not amedia story.
The media was not perpetuatingthe story.
(13:25):
Social media was perpetuatingthe story.
Astronomer not commenting.
That's what fueled the fire.
It wasn't the press.
I was speaking to the press.
They were all trying to verifythe statements.
The first time I saw averification was from Variety.
Astronomer did eventuallyrespond.
They did debunk the hoax, butit took way too long.
And then, of course, the nextday came the resignation.
(13:46):
I thought for sure they woulddo it in the morning Again.
What did they do?
They waited until Fridayafternoon.
Why wait that long,particularly when we know, based
on the interim CEO that theylike the press.
Now, this is a part of theastronomer statement that I did
not like, because the statementis one that I felt was a little
(14:08):
off kilter.
It came from the astronomerinterim CEO, pete DeJoy.
He shared the statement onLinkedIn July 21st, so this is
two days after Astronomerannounced that Andy Byron had
resigned.
You'll have to let me know whatyou think of this quote.
The events of the past few dayshave received a level of media
attention that few companiesM-dash, let alone startups in
(14:30):
our small corner of the data andAI world M-dash ever encounter.
The spotlight has been unusualand surreal for our team and,
while I would never have wishedfor it to happen like this,
astronomer is now a householdname.
End quote.
I hate that quote.
I really do.
It's like he's taking glee.
It's like he's stepping on thecorpse of his predecessor.
I think it's in bad taste.
(14:51):
They should have released theone statement about the CEO and
that's it Done, not leverage thepress.
It's a bad look.
So, as of the time of thisrecording, byron has stepped
down and no public statementfrom Kristen Cabot.
She's still employed atAstronomer.
Now let's talk about what all ofthis actually means, because
this wasn't just a gossipheadline.
(15:13):
It was a live case study inWorkplace Power Dynamics.
He was the CEO.
He did hire her Digitalimpersonation meme culture oh,
my goodness, I said this in theTikTok.
This was peak meme culture.
But it was also a case study inthe collapse of communication
control in real time.
And we've seen all of thisbefore, but we haven't seen it
(15:34):
at this speed Because there wasa delay in the response.
In other words, they weren'tacting fast enough behind the
scenes.
It gave room for falsenarratives to bloom and take
root, because they did not sayanything to debunk that
statement.
So for communicators andleaders, the lesson is clear If
you don't say it, someone elsewill, and they will say it a lot
(15:56):
better than you and they'llprobably use a lot of em dashes.
The only things confirmed inthis story are the video, the
identities and the resignation.
Everything else is a mix ofspeculation, parody and digital
debris.
This is what happens when astory hits the algorithm before
it hits the boardroom.
If you're in a position ofleadership or advising someone
who is and you think this couldnever happen to us, you're not
(16:20):
paying attention, because we'renot just in a news cycle anymore
, we're in a reaction cycle.
My thanks to the supporter ofthis podcast, muckrack, for
giving me the tools to quicklyfind all the stories about this
story.
That's all for this week on thePR Breakdown.
Just remember everyone,sometimes the most viral part of
(16:43):
a crisis isn't what happened,it's what people think happened.
Bye for now.
70,521.
That's the number of newsarticles that included the name
Andy Byron in the past weekalone.
And if you're wondering how atech CEO ended up in a meme with
Coldplay no, I'm not even goingto say that, of course.
You know how a CEO ended up ina meme with Coldplay lyrics and
(00:20):
a ParityX account named PeterEnnis.
You are not alone.
Welcome to the PR Breakdown.
I'm your host, molly McPherson,and this episode is about that
concert, that Kiss Cam videothat turned into an internet
feeding frenzy, and what happenswhen a name and a face and
(00:43):
silence goes viral.
I'm still laughing.
Let's break it down.
The scene.
Foxborough, or many of you mayknow it as Gillette Stadium in
Massachusetts.
It was a Coldplay concert, onethat I wish I went to.
It was a packed house, on theJumbotron, a man and a woman,
(01:05):
the man's arm around a woman.
I'm laughing because I'mthinking of every meme out there
.
You know what I think?
My favorite meme of all was thePhillies, the Philly fanatic,
(01:26):
the Philly fanatic I don't evenknow.
The female fanatic I'm a RedSox fan, so I don't even know.
I don't know what her name is.
They recreated the moment whereAndy Byron's arm was around his
chief people officer, kristenCabot.
Both, as we know, are currentlyreportedly married to other
people.
We all know that moment right,the moment where they split.
(01:49):
On a Substack Live that I gavelast Friday, one of the things
that I focused on and otherpeople were talking about as
well, is what happened themoment of recognition that they
saw their faces in the jumbotron.
Cabot immediately felt shame,but Andy Byron he ducked and
that says everything about thatguy.
(02:11):
More on that guy in a moment.
By the next morning I did somequick, sloppy math.
I was looking at 34 millionviews on the original TikTok
post, but that number 70,521,that's a number I called up.
Today, thanks to Muckrack, anew supporter to the podcast, I
(02:31):
now have a PR platform thatgives me all the news stories I
need right at my fingertips, andthis story had everything
Howard Dynamics after all, hewas a CEO and he hired her Also
HR entanglement, a Coldplaysoundtrack and a fake CEO
(02:52):
statement with zero publicstatement from Astronomer, the
company that the Knudelers bothwork for Now.
Thankfully, this viral crisiswas not known as Cold Playgate,
though some people were tryingto make Fetch happen there, but
it really didn't need a name.
All it needed was the clip andthere were plenty of social
(03:14):
media threads, reddit theories,instagram memes the whole
machine turned on.
This led to a story blowing upto even bigger proportions.
The reason why is because no onespoke.
Byron Cabot they didn't speak.
It's not expected for them tospeak, but they didn't say
anything.
But the company didn't sayanything either.
On a TikTok post from last week, I mentioned that if I were
(03:38):
brought in to do crisismanagement for the company
Astronomer, I would advise tonot send out a statement right
away, even when the story wasgoing viral, because the first
statement needed to be to a keystakeholder and that was
internal.
The staff needed to know whatwas going on, because all the
young Gen Z staffers were allover this first.
There is no doubt in my mindthat this went viral, probably
(04:01):
on a Slack channel before it gotto the board of directors.
It was up to astronomerleadership, key leadership.
They're a privately heldcompany backed by private equity
.
There are no shareholders inthere, but they did have a board
and they needed to make adecision right away.
They let it go too long.
Ideally, what you want to do isyou want to make that HR
decision right away, so you canmake that public statement,
(04:22):
because the fact that it is acompany with investors, it has
customers, it has keystakeholders.
There needs to be a publicstatement because people want to
know what's happening.
But because it was private andthere was no statement yet, I
didn't say anything.
That's the reason why I didn'thop on TikTok or social media to
(04:42):
give my two cents, even thoughI was getting lots of requests,
not only from friends andcolleagues and people who work
in the biz and the media biz,but from a lot of reporters as
well.
I had crazy reach out from thepress, most notably late
afternoon from a nationalmorning television program, also
a national syndicatedtelevision program, another
(05:04):
morning show outlet.
They all wanted me to give acomment and I still didn't feel
comfortable doing it becausethere wasn't an official
statement yet from Astronomerand I just felt like I was
feeding the beast at that point.
But another reason why Icouldn't speak is because I
literally could not speak.
I had a dentist appointment inthe early afternoon.
I had to get Novocaine andbecause I'm a baby, at the
(05:24):
dental office my dentist gave meeven more Novocaine.
So my mouth was drooping a bit.
Even if I wanted to go on air,I couldn't.
Even if I wanted to do a longTikTok, I couldn't do that
because I couldn't move my mouth.
But a reason why I get thesemedia outlets, why I couldn't do
a press statement as well, isbecause I had a hair appointment
and I said I made thisappointment months ago.
I can't cancel it.
(05:45):
And I thought, gosh, the MollyMcPherson of 10 years ago, 15
years ago, geez, of two yearsago, thinking of turning down
morning television because I hada hair appointment.
Now why do I bring up this hairappointment?
It actually pertains to thestory.
If you listened to my SubstackLive last Friday, you heard me
explain the story of visiting myhairstylist that night.
(06:07):
Because when I first walked inI said to Jess hey, just so you
know, I canceled the interviewon this program because I needed
to keep my appointment with you.
And she's like, really why?
What was the story?
Here are the inside baseballstories that happened when I was
at the salon.
First, my stylist tells me, oneof the stylists went to
(06:27):
Gillette.
Then because, as a favor to hisbuddy, another stylist who does
all the artist's hair when theyappear at Foxborough needed the
help.
The guy from the salon didChris Martin's hair that night
and stayed there and saw thejumbotron.
I was like what?
I'm on my Substack in mycommunity in the thread chatting
kind of real time with everyoneand my Substack boy do they
(06:48):
deliver?
Because everybody just wentwhoop, they all jumped in so we
were having a great conversation.
It was fun.
Then my stylist says to me Jesssays oh my God, molly, you will
not believe this.
A client wrote her to say theywere with one of the two
canoodlers.
I don't want to say because Idon't want to give too much
(07:09):
there.
They were just with them likeon Monday night.
So this was Thursday night, sofour days earlier they were with
that person.
Of course I have to immediatelytell my Substack community what
was going on.
I love that.
Two people in the communitywere saying this is such a
Boston story.
And it really is a Boston story.
I said to the group I swear bythe end of the week I'm going to
(07:30):
be in the inner circle of thatstory.
After my appointment I get inthe car, I look on my phone and
there is my group text from mygirlfriends.
We're all headed to thevineyard this weekend for our
annual vineyard trip.
One of my friends in the groupsaid is anyone paying attention
to the CEO story with Coldplay?
Molly, you must be payingattention to it.
Then my friend goes on to saythat someone close to her, one
(07:55):
of the Knudler's siblings,wedding the weekend before and I
went, that's it, that's it.
I didn't even get home and I'malready in the inner circle.
My friend shared a lot ofinteresting details that frankly
track.
So I'm headed to the vineyardthis weekend.
So I'm definitely going to findout more Now.
Thanks to Angie she's a memberof my Substack community.
(08:17):
She sent a link to Men's HealthMagazine, I think it was, with
a response to the fake CEO postabout Andy Byard.
Astronomer finally startedcalling individual media outlets
to debunk that post and say itwas fake.
It took them all day to stopthe post.
That was the fatal mistake thatwas made by Astronomer.
(08:40):
I fully place the blame on them.
It's completely understandablethat it would take time to
decide what they were going todo with the CEO.
The concert only happened thenight before.
Maybe Andy Byron didn't evencome into the office, which I
think would be fair.
They would have to track himdown and talk to him and then
they had to decide what to do.
I'm going to give them thebenefit of a doubt that there
was an internal story and theyprobably were trying to hammer
(09:05):
out an exit deal with Andy Byron.
That's why it was so easy forme the next day just to make a
guess and say, hey, this guy'sgoing to be out by the end of
the week.
That's why Fox News they wroteme over the weekend asking if
they could use my TikTok andthey wanted a quote from me as
well, and I went.
I don't want to do that, butthey did me a solid and they
called well, kind of a solid.
(09:26):
They called me a TikTok.
Pr expert Molly McPhersonaccurately calls the fate of the
Coldplay CEO.
So I thank them for that.
But honestly, we all called it.
I read part of the astronomerstatement on a TikTok.
I really don't need to read itagain because it doesn't matter.
It's just typical corporatespeak.
(09:47):
There's nothing special abouttheir statement at all, except
for two things.
One, they outed the employeewho was supposedly seen in the
corporate box with Cabot andByron.
That employee was misidentifiedbecause everybody's profiles
were on LinkedIn and they couldgrab all that information.
People immediately associated agirl in the box who kind of
(10:08):
looked like an employee there.
Then this poor girl her namewent viral as well.
But the mistake that Astronomermade is they put her name in
the statement, so then they madeher go viral all over again.
Now they were trying to attemptto quell all the speculation
about her, but they didn't haveto say her name again.
So I think that was a mistakeand this statement, no surprise,
(10:30):
came out late on a Fridayafternoon and a summer afternoon
.
Let's talk about what was realand what wasn't.
We stated the long apologyattributed to Byron that
circulated wildly.
That was fake and really.
If you got to the point wherethe fake Andy Byron quoted
Coldplay's Fix you and ended thestatement with lights will
(10:54):
guide you.
Also the fake Facebookstatement from Byron's wife,
megan.
That was also fake.
I posted on TikTok I'll includelinks in the show note and I
explained why that post was fakeas well.
It was tied to a spoof accountand how we know that it was fake
.
It wasn't her account.
We all know her profile photobecause profile photos on
(11:18):
Facebook are public.
But also the writing was verysimilar to the fake Andy Byron
statement as well.
It was too lyrical, it was tooartificial.
I would bet anything.
It was written by AI.
Both statements had em dashesin it and I had some grammar
types come at me in my postsaying why are you saying that
(11:39):
em dashes are in AI and emdashes don't Like?
Okay, I get it.
No one loves an M-dash morethan me.
It's my favorite punctuation.
But ChatGPT does use M-dashes alot and I don't write in
M-dashes anymore.
I used to love M-dashes becausethey're so prevalent in
artificial intelligence-assistedlanguage.
(12:01):
It's also because it wasformatted poorly and it didn't
come from any verified source.
It didn't come from the press,it didn't come from a law office
or anything like that.
It just came from likeManhattan.
But there was a lack of intent.
There was the lack of why Like?
Why are we even getting thestatement?
The writing was to hook you, toget into the statement, to
share the statement, to engagewith the statement.
(12:22):
They wanted people to share thestatement and that's exactly
what happened.
The statements went viral.
The personal lesson from areputation point of view.
I mean look at Megan Byron.
Her name went viral.
This is a woman who did nothing.
She was sitting at home, not atColdplay, but her Facebook page
changed drastically Veryquickly.
(12:44):
We could see her reaction tothe crisis in real time.
First her married name wasdropped from Facebook because
likely Megan Byron was thinkingthis was a very personal crisis
for people who she knew like onFacebook.
But then she likely startedgetting inundated with press
calls and then made her Facebookpage go dark.
Of course, that leads to a lotof speculation.
Was she distancing herself?
(13:04):
Was she reacting privately?
Again, it's private, itshouldn't matter and, believe me
, journalists were workingovertime trying to verify all
this information.
I had some people online in thecomments saying this was a
media-generated story and theywere blaming the press and I
replied back no, this was not amedia story.
The media was not perpetuatingthe story.
(13:25):
Social media was perpetuatingthe story.
Astronomer not commenting.
That's what fueled the fire.
It wasn't the press.
I was speaking to the press.
They were all trying to verifythe statements.
The first time I saw averification was from Variety.
Astronomer did eventuallyrespond.
They did debunk the hoax, butit took way too long.
And then, of course, the nextday came the resignation.
(13:46):
I thought for sure they woulddo it in the morning Again.
What did they do?
They waited until Fridayafternoon.
Why wait that long,particularly when we know, based
on the interim CEO that theylike the press.
Now, this is a part of theastronomer statement that I did
not like, because the statementis one that I felt was a little
(14:08):
off kilter.
It came from the astronomerinterim CEO, pete DeJoy.
He shared the statement onLinkedIn July 21st, so this is
two days after Astronomerannounced that Andy Byron had
resigned.
You'll have to let me know whatyou think of this quote.
The events of the past few dayshave received a level of media
attention that few companiesM-dash, let alone startups in
(14:30):
our small corner of the data andAI world M-dash ever encounter.
The spotlight has been unusualand surreal for our team and,
while I would never have wishedfor it to happen like this,
astronomer is now a householdname.
End quote.
I hate that quote.
I really do.
It's like he's taking glee.
It's like he's stepping on thecorpse of his predecessor.
I think it's in bad taste.
(14:51):
They should have released theone statement about the CEO and
that's it Done, not leverage thepress.
It's a bad look.
So, as of the time of thisrecording, byron has stepped
down and no public statementfrom Kristen Cabot.
She's still employed atAstronomer.
Now let's talk about what all ofthis actually means, because
this wasn't just a gossipheadline.
(15:13):
It was a live case study inWorkplace Power Dynamics.
He was the CEO.
He did hire her Digitalimpersonation meme culture oh,
my goodness, I said this in theTikTok.
This was peak meme culture.
But it was also a case study inthe collapse of communication
control in real time.
And we've seen all of thisbefore, but we haven't seen it
(15:34):
at this speed Because there wasa delay in the response.
In other words, they weren'tacting fast enough behind the
scenes.
It gave room for falsenarratives to bloom and take
root, because they did not sayanything to debunk that
statement.
So for communicators andleaders, the lesson is clear If
you don't say it, someone elsewill, and they will say it a lot
(15:56):
better than you and they'llprobably use a lot of em dashes.
The only things confirmed inthis story are the video, the
identities and the resignation.
Everything else is a mix ofspeculation, parody and digital
debris.
This is what happens when astory hits the algorithm before
it hits the boardroom.
If you're in a position ofleadership or advising someone
who is and you think this couldnever happen to us, you're not
(16:20):
paying attention, because we'renot just in a news cycle anymore
, we're in a reaction cycle.
My thanks to the supporter ofthis podcast, muckrack, for
giving me the tools to quicklyfind all the stories about this
story.
That's all for this week on thePR Breakdown.
Just remember everyone,sometimes the most viral part of
(16:43):
a crisis isn't what happened,it's what people think happened.
Bye for now.
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