When Owners Attack: HBO’s Troll Army Takes on TV Critics
Ah, when owners attack.
Maybe you’ve seen it before, whilst out reading the many reviews of the internet. There’s the mild form, that corporate copy-paste “we’re sorry to hear this,” mumbo jumbo, which is only an attack in that its blandness is offensive.
But then there are the mom and pop shops, the local bar, that mechanic down the road, the people who’s lives are defined by their self-run businesses, who can’t weather a few negative reviews. The only recourse they can find is an ALL CAPS attack on whoever gave them a one star.
While those can get unhinged, you still kind of understand it.
But today’s story? Woof. Talk about big people acting small.
This Rolling Stone article details the facts of an ongoing wrongful termination lawsuit against HBO, which revealed the certain plot of a certain CEO.
The story goes like this: HBO releases a show, a TV critic writes something less than flattering about it, and then we get an exchange like this between HBO CEO Casey Bloys and VP of Drama Programming Kathleen McCaffrey:
“How dare someone write that!!” Bloys texted McCaffrey, according to the messages. “I want to say something along the lines of…”
What followed would be a snide retort, a retort that was then posted verbatim using a fake account set up by a lower level HBO employee.
And this would happen again:
“Casey is looking for a tweeter … he’s mad at Alan Sepinwall,”
And again:
“Maybe our friend needs to say…”
And just, my goodness- audacity is the word, if you’re looking for one:
“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…”
“Casey is looking for a tweeter … he’s mad at Alan Sepinwall,” McCaffrey texted Temori, per the report. “Can our secret operative please tweet…”
“we have to delete this chain right? Omg I just got scared lol”
So this happened A LOT. A fake vegan Texan Twitter using mom spouted off against many TV critics, always defending little HBO against the baddies.
But it gets worse. He even dove into the comments section of Deadline articles. And got mad!
“Someone actually says we went downhill after Lombardo left! Please have them post, ‘Hi David Levine! HBO seems just fine thanks!’”
I don’t have anything to add to this. Nothing verbal anyway. Just shaking my head.
BUT. The man himself has words to say! Other than apologizing and saying the tweets were “not very effective,” he added:
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.”
Yeah, that seems like a good idea.
