Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Dustin Rowles | TV | November 1, 2023
I generally like Casey Bloys, currently HBO’s CEO and chairman, mostly because he’s fighting the good fight to maintain HBO’s reputation for quality content even as the brand itself is swimming in Discovery network detritus, makeover television, and reality shows featuring naked people.
Bloys is fiercely protective of HBO programming, and while that is a good thing to have in a boss, it’s not so great when protecting those programs means creating fake Twitter accounts to respond to television critics. According to reporting from Rolling Stone, that’s exactly the kind of behavior that Bloys has engaged in over the years.
Messages responding to critics from fake Twitter accounts have surfaced as part of a wrongful termination suit that, honestly, doesn’t have a lot to do with trolling messages. But it is embarrassing for Casey Bloys and HBO, and it’s the kind of pettiness we can get behind because we love mess.
The mess in question here is relatively benign, all things considered, but one would expect the CEO of a prestige network not to take random shots at a critic on Twitter to intentionally “make her feel bad,” as Bloys contemplated doing to Vulture’s Kathryn VanArendonk for daring to tweet that Perry Mason should find another way to illustrate male trauma beyond trench warfare.
Though Bloys discussed sending a cutting response to hurt her feelings, he ultimately declined. However, Bloys did instruct an employee to use the fake Twitter account to respond to a tepid review of The Nevers by Alan Sepinwall with, “Alan is always predictably safe and scared in his opinions.” After New York Times’ chief TV critic James Poniewozik gave another mid review to the series, the same fake account replied to him, “How shocking that two middle-aged white men … are sh**ting on a show about women.” (For the record, Bloys is also a middle-aged white man).
I’ll give Bloys this much: He knows where a critic’s pressure points are. On a mediocre review of Mare of Easttown, for instance, the fake account also accused Sepinwall of “virtue signaling.”
It wasn’t just critics that Bloys trolled with fake accounts. He also used fake accounts to get into it with other commenters on Deadline, which honestly makes it sound like Bloys spends way too much time online and not enough time developing new HBO series. That may be why the network hasn’t produced a new hit in a long while.
