Did The Simpsons predict the viral Coldplay 'kiss cam' story?

It’s the news story of the moment: a tech company’s CEO and chief people officer were seen cuddling at a Coldplay concert, shown on the big screen courtesy of the ‘Jumbotron’, before ducking out of frame in shock, prompting singer Chris Martin to say “either they’re having an affair or they’re just very shy”.

And now, people are claiming The Simpsons saw it coming - but not everything is as it seems.

The incident itself happened on Wednesday at the Gillette Stadium in Massachusetts, with the company in question – Astronomer – announcing on Saturday via LinkedIn that its CEO, Andy Byron, has “tendered his resignation”.

While Chief People Officer Kristin Cabot’s response to the awkward moment is unknown, Astronomer has said its board of directors has initiated a “formal investigation”.

The viral video has since sparked countless memes – from parodies to reworked Coldplay songs – but one emerging claim is that Matt Groening’s iconic animated series once pointed to the “kiss cam” blunder:

“Is there anything the Simpsons don’t know,” asked another:

Some even got specific, giving series and episode numbers which featured the supposed screenshot:

Other air dates given by social media users, and seen by indy100, include 2003 and 2015:

Except, when it comes to specific episodes, Season 21, Episode 10 (which aired in 2010) was “Once Upon a Time in Springfield”, and actually concerned Krusty the Clown’s romance with Princess Penelope.

Meanwhile Season 26, Episode 10 (from 2015) was “The Man Who Came to Be Dinner”, where the famous family board a theme park ride only for it to actually be a spaceship, with aliens Kang and Kodos appearing on a screen in the ship – not the CEO and the people officer, or anyone resembling them – to tell them they have been abducted.

And if you need more evidence that the image is bogus, The Economic Times ran it through an AI checker and it said it was “quite confident that this image, or a significant part of it, was created by AI”.

So, while The Simpsons has seemingly predicted sporting events, Donald Trump’s run for president and the Disney/20th Century Fox merger, the same can’t be said for this latest viral moment.

In fact, back in October, showrunner and executive producer Matt Selman addressed the show’s knack for inadvertently predicting future events by telling People: “The sourpuss answer I always give that no one likes is that if you study history and math, it would be literally impossible for us not to predict things.

“If you say enough things, some of them are going to overlap with reality, and then that’s the math element.

“And then, the history element is if you make a show that is based on studying the past foolishness of humanity, you are surely going to anticipate the future foolishness of humanity as it sinks further into foolishness fair. So we don’t really think about it.”

He also added that writers “hate” when fans “put obviously fake images online and say we predicted things that we didn’t” – which is what’s happened here.

Why not read…

• Phillie Phanatic parody of the Coldplay 'kiss cam' goes viral
• People think The Simpsons predicted the Labubu craze

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