Free Fridays: Best thing to do with a juicy story.

25 July 2025

I don’t know about you but my entire feed this week has been about the Coldplay couple. I clicked on it once, and now that’s all I see. Over and over again, it’s a blue shirt man hugging a black tank top woman made into all sorts of content. I just couldn't escape that story. It became so big as if it was the biggest saga of all times, and I haven’t seen the internet react to it so much globally.

Like everyone else, I was like oh wow - a cheating couple exposed at Coldplay concert? That’s horrible! Then the plot thickened faster than a drama on TV.

Turns out, it wasn’t just any random couple. The man? A CEO of a well-known company. The woman? His Head of HR. I thought of my friend Tasha, who’s a head of HR, and I couldn’t imagine her doing this kind of stunt at any workplace. And the place they got caught? Smiling and dancing away at Coldplay in front of thousands of people. My algorithm saw me clicking once and said, “Ah, you like this. Let me feed you more.” No pleaseeee, now I’m knee-deep in memes, reaction videos, AI-generated parodies, fake screenshots, even a video supposedly from his son crying in front of the camera. I mean… come on.

The internet is fast. Like, scary fast. Within hours, people had identified their names, LinkedIn profiles, wedding photos, office address, car plate number, how much their spouses would get from a divorce. It’s crazy! And the smiling girl standing next to them? The one people thought was their colleague also involved in the affair? Turns out… it wasn’t her. It wasn’t even her. But she got dragged through the mud for nothing.

That’s when it hit me. Wait.

What are we doing?

What am I doing?

I don’t condone cheating. Never have, never will. But do I think people deserve to be unpacked like a checked-in luggage and brutalised by millions of strangers online? No. Nobody deserves that. It's like people forget that behind these viral videos are actual humans. With actual families. Actual emotions. Actual lives.

The CEO resigned. His career? Gone. His family? Most likely, in ruins. The HR girl? I can’t even imagine the shame, the fear, the mental toll. Where do they even go now?

What scares me most is not even the cheating scandal. It’s how we, the internet, responded. It’s the gleeful popcorn-munching. The comments that say, “Serves them right” while tagging 14 friends. When did we become judges? We’ve gone from harmless netizens to Netflix writers, crafting stories, spin-offs, and alternate endings, all in the name of “tea.” We made a mockery out of these two, as if we’ve never made mistakes in our lives. We’re just lucky our mistakes aren’t publicised to the world, otherwise that couple could’ve been us in different scenarios.

When did we become like this? When did society start mistaking cruelty for justice?

Here’s what I learned. When something juicy pops up on your feed next time, and you feel your fingers itching to share it or drop a witty comment - pause. Ask yourself: Is this any of my business? If it’s not your husband, not your HR, not your Tasha, not your Coldplay ticket - then guys, it’s not our problem.

“Leave what does not concern you,” Prophet Muhammad S.A.W said - let’s not forget that wise reminder from the ultimate leader.

So what should we do the next time we hear a juicy story?

Here’s what we do…

Nothing.

Don’t retweet.
Don’t comment.
Don’t repost the meme.
Don’t write “omggg I knew it” when you did not, in fact, know it.
Don’t join in the cyberbullying or the mockery or the endless forwarding of pain.

Because whether she resigns, he resigns, they stay together, they break up, they elope to Penang - it has absolutely nothing to do with your life.

So the best thing to do with a juicy story is… nothing.

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Before you go…

Let me know you’ve read this. Comment “Nothing” on my latest post at @sincerelyvivy.

See you there! :)