A valuable lesson can be learned from HBO CEO Casey Bloys, and it isn't remotely related to his actual duties as the streaming giant's programming chief. Bloys has become the poster child of X (formerly Twitter) burner accounts after a former crew member on The Idol exposed him for using fake profiles to attack critics of HBO shows.
UPDATE (11/2, 10:40 a.m. ET): Bloys has addressed the report during a presentation at HBO's New York headquarters, calling his burner account scam a "very, very dumb idea."
"For those of you who know me, you know that I am a programming executive very, very passionate about the shows that we decide to do. And the people who do them and the people who work on them," he said [via Variety]. "I want the shows to be great. I want people to love them. I want you all to love them. It's very important to me what you all think of the shows. When you think about that, and then think of 2020 and 2021, I'm working from home and doing an unhealthy amount of scrolling through Twitter. And I come up with a very, very dumb idea to vent my frustration."
Bloys continued:
Obviously, six tweets over a year and a half is not very effective. But I do apologize to the people who were mentioned in the leaked emails, texts. Obviously, nobody wants to be part of a story that they have nothing to do with. But also, as many of you know, I have progressed over the past couple of years to using DMs. So now, when I take issue with something in a review, or take issue with something I see, many of you are gracious enough to engage with me in a back and forth and I think that is a probably a much healthier way to go about this. But we'll talk more about that, and you guys can ask me anything you want in the Q&A. I just wanted to put that out there.
Burner accounts are nothing new — if anything, their prevalence has made them all the more dangerous to use, given how easy they are to pick out — but, in leaked text messages from Bloys to senior VP of drama programming Kathleen McCaffrey, the former seems to think he invented the concept.
In response to a Vulture writer's critique of Perry Mason's perceived inability to portray male trauma without going straight to war flashbacks, Bloys sent McCaffrey the oh-so-original idea.
"Maybe a Twitter user should tweet that that's a pretty blithe response to what soldiers legitimately go through on [the] battlefield," he texted, according to Rolling Stone. "Do you have a secret handle? Couldn't we say especially given that it's D-Day to dismiss a soldier's experience like that seems pretty disrespectful … this must be answered!"
The former HBO employee who leaked the texts is Sully Temori, who's currently in the midst of a wrongful termination lawsuit against several executives who served on The Idol, including the Weeknd.
Temori said that McCaffrey tapped him to take on Bloys's "secret mission" in a bid to discredit Rolling Stone critic Alan Sepinwall's 2.5-star review of 2021's The Nevers.
"He always texts me asking me to find friends to reply … is there a way to create a dummy account that can't be traced to us to do his bidding?" she wrote. "Can our secret operative please tweet at Alan's review: 'Alan is always predictably safe and scared in his opinions.' And then we have to delete this chain right? Omg I just got scared lol."
The burner Temori used, identified as Kelly Shepherd (@KellySh33889356), has what looks like a stock photo as a profile picture and joined X (then Twitter) within days of sending the reply to Sepinwall.
"Alan is always predictably safe and scared in his opinions," the account wrote.
According to IndieWire, Bloys will address the controversy tomorrow (November 2) as he announces the 2024 HBO and Max streaming schedules to the media.
UPDATE (11/2, 10:40 a.m. ET): Bloys has addressed the report during a presentation at HBO's New York headquarters, calling his burner account scam a "very, very dumb idea."
"For those of you who know me, you know that I am a programming executive very, very passionate about the shows that we decide to do. And the people who do them and the people who work on them," he said [via Variety]. "I want the shows to be great. I want people to love them. I want you all to love them. It's very important to me what you all think of the shows. When you think about that, and then think of 2020 and 2021, I'm working from home and doing an unhealthy amount of scrolling through Twitter. And I come up with a very, very dumb idea to vent my frustration."
Bloys continued:
Obviously, six tweets over a year and a half is not very effective. But I do apologize to the people who were mentioned in the leaked emails, texts. Obviously, nobody wants to be part of a story that they have nothing to do with. But also, as many of you know, I have progressed over the past couple of years to using DMs. So now, when I take issue with something in a review, or take issue with something I see, many of you are gracious enough to engage with me in a back and forth and I think that is a probably a much healthier way to go about this. But we'll talk more about that, and you guys can ask me anything you want in the Q&A. I just wanted to put that out there.
Burner accounts are nothing new — if anything, their prevalence has made them all the more dangerous to use, given how easy they are to pick out — but, in leaked text messages from Bloys to senior VP of drama programming Kathleen McCaffrey, the former seems to think he invented the concept.
In response to a Vulture writer's critique of Perry Mason's perceived inability to portray male trauma without going straight to war flashbacks, Bloys sent McCaffrey the oh-so-original idea.
"Maybe a Twitter user should tweet that that's a pretty blithe response to what soldiers legitimately go through on [the] battlefield," he texted, according to Rolling Stone. "Do you have a secret handle? Couldn't we say especially given that it's D-Day to dismiss a soldier's experience like that seems pretty disrespectful … this must be answered!"
The former HBO employee who leaked the texts is Sully Temori, who's currently in the midst of a wrongful termination lawsuit against several executives who served on The Idol, including the Weeknd.
Temori said that McCaffrey tapped him to take on Bloys's "secret mission" in a bid to discredit Rolling Stone critic Alan Sepinwall's 2.5-star review of 2021's The Nevers.
"He always texts me asking me to find friends to reply … is there a way to create a dummy account that can't be traced to us to do his bidding?" she wrote. "Can our secret operative please tweet at Alan's review: 'Alan is always predictably safe and scared in his opinions.' And then we have to delete this chain right? Omg I just got scared lol."
The burner Temori used, identified as Kelly Shepherd (@KellySh33889356), has what looks like a stock photo as a profile picture and joined X (then Twitter) within days of sending the reply to Sepinwall.
"Alan is always predictably safe and scared in his opinions," the account wrote.
According to IndieWire, Bloys will address the controversy tomorrow (November 2) as he announces the 2024 HBO and Max streaming schedules to the media.