Highlights: In June 2020, Casey Bloys, HBO’s then-president of original programming, needed someone to “go on a mission.”
Bloys — who was named HBO’s CEO and chairman in October 2022 — was irked by a tweet from Vulture TV critic Kathryn VanArendonk, who had some thoughts about Perry Mason, HBO’s series starring Matthew Rhys as a private detective turned defense attorney in 1930s Los Angeles.
Bloys was annoyed, according to text messages reviewed by Rolling Stone, and sent VanArendonk’s tweet to Kathleen McCaffrey, HBO’s senior vice president of drama programming. “Maybe a Twitter user should tweet that that’s a pretty blithe response to what soldiers legitimately go through on [the] battlefield,” he texted. “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!”
Bloys was serious. “Who can go on a mission,” he asked McCaffrey, according to the messages, adding that they needed to find a “mole” at “arms length” from the HBO executive team. “We just need a random to make the point and make her feel bad.”
Daily reminder that astroturfing like this is the norm, and it has been for years. Shit like this is easy to do. You can even take it further and fabricate the a truly disgraceful complaint, and counter it with the perfect pre-written riposte. And if enhances your PR standing and helps you make money, are you going to just leave that money on the table and say “no thanks, we’ve made enough money this quarter”? It would be trivial to preempt criticism of a controversial production decision by commissioning fabricated death threats against the writers of a show, solely to victimize yourself and taint the waters of any possible criticism. Why would anyone not do that? Out of the goodness of their hearts?
And now all reviews are worthless. Nobody is going to read them. You just lost one of the most powerful tools to gain customers.
Now imagining the CEO of a major entertainment company staying up all night to see if his post gets more upvotes than the original.
Holy shit I could be ceo material.
Jerry, remember that time you left a comment underneath that YouTube video and someone replied and called you a dumbass, so you replied and told them, “it takes one to know one,” and you stayed up all night hitting “refresh” on your browser waiting for them to reply and then you fell asleep crying?
This right here is why they’re worth 1000X as much as the rest of us.
/s
How much is HBO paying this guy to get into petty Twitter arguments?
That’s hilarious.
