Casey Bloys apologizes, attributes those fake tweets to lockdown mindset

We’ve seen a lot of flavors of celebrity (or generally powerful person) apologies over the years. There’s the classic notes app, the unhinged ukulele serenade, and even the Selena Gomez-patented deferral by talking about a broken hand. Still, even when one might think all the routes to express one’s regret had already been taken, you can be sure that Casey Bloys’ mea culpa is something new.

Yesterday, a Rolling Stone report revealed that the HBO CEO is really, really sensitive about negative comments from mean old television critics and anonymous Deadline commenters about the merits of his precious shows. So sensitive, in fact, that he reportedly created a “secret army” of dummy accounts to respond to the bad reviews in question.

Unfortunately for Bloys (but fortunately for the rest of us), HBO happened to have a press event scheduled to announce its upcoming slate of programming this very morning. Presumably aiming to rip the band-aid right off, the CEO chose to not only address the scandal but to open the whole event with his apology.

“For those of you who know me, you know that I am a passionate programming executive, and I’m very, very passionate about the shows that we decide to do and the people who do the shows and the people who work on them. I want the shows to be great, and I want you all to love them,” he said. Okay, so far so good.

Then he continued: “So when you think of that mindset, and then think of 2020 and 2021. I’m home working from home, spending an unhealthy amount of time scrolling through Twitter. I came up with a very, very dumb idea to vent my frustration.” Huh. On one hand, who among us didn’t go a little insane during quarantine? On the other, most of us channeled that frustration into baking banana bread and learning TikTok dances, rather than randomly antagonizing journalists for simply doing their jobs.

Well, it sounds like Bloys actually may have had time for all three of those hobbies. “Obviously, six tweets over a year and a half is not effective,” he continued. (We can think of a whole host of celebrities and random civilian Twitter main characters who might disagree with that statement.) “I do apologize to the people who were mentioned in the emails and texts,” he went on. “Obviously, nobody wants to be part of a story that they had 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, I DM many of you. Many of you are gracious enough to engage with me in a back-and-forth, which is a healthier way to go about it.” “Healthy” is certainly… a word to use. It’s okay, Bloys; in time, you’ll learn along with the rest of us that the comment section is ungovernable.