Nothing's pre-launch strategy of slowly trickling out details for the Phone 1 has done wonders for its hype cycle. Combined with the fact that many of the initial hands-on reviews for the phone seem positive, it seems like the company is headed for a solid launch of its first phone. Unfortunately, mere hours after the launch event, things quickly turned sour when Nothing found itself in the midst of another controversy, all surrounding #DearNothing going viral on Twitter.
A quick scroll through these tagged tweets, and you'll quickly realize that most of the comments criticize Nothing and its founder Carl Pei for allegedly neglecting the South Indian tech community, with many even calling for a boycott of the company. It all started when YouTuber Prasadtechintelugu released a new video where he unboxed a fake Nothing Phone 1 box to reveal a letter simply reading "this device is not for South Indian people," written in a font resembling the one Nothing uses on its promotional material.
Subsequently, screenshots of this fake letter started doing rounds on Twitter, where many mistook it as official communication from the company, despite its initial intention as a statement against Nothing's alleged favoring of North Indian reviewers when sending out review units. But since it wasn't accompanied by any clear-cut disclaimer — not to mention how fast misinformation can spread online — many actually thought it to be legit, eventually leading to #DearNothing to start trending in India.
Nothing India's response in full.
In response to the incident, Manu Sharma, vice president of Nothing India has issued a statement reiterating that the box and the letter shown in the video are fake, denying any allegations of discrimination. The statement implies that the brand has actually taken care that regional reviewers get their fair share of review units as well. Since this controversy, Prasad Tech has taken down the controversial video, uploading a clarification to his channel via YouTube Shorts in its place. Needless to say, it seems as though Nothing did a fair job at picking some of the most popular tech reviewers and journalists to send units to, despite the conversation on Twitter.