Why ‘DearNothing’ and ‘BoycottNothing’ is trending on Twitter

Nothing, the company founded by Carl Pei, launched its first smartphone, the Nothing Phone (1) globally on July 12 evening. A few hours after the launch though, the hashtag that was trending in India was ‘#DearNothing’. A huge number of users from the South Indian tech community took to Twitter to criticise Nothing for something it hasn’t even done.

Not many people understand that everything you see on the internet, and on YouTube, is not true, and neither do they really get into the task of verifying things. And that’s exactly what happened here. The ‘DearNothing’ hashtag started trending after a tech content creator, who has a channel called Prasadtechintelugu, shared a video. Meant as a ‘prank’, the video showed Prasad unboxing a fake Nothing Phone (1) box which turns out to be empty with just a letter in it.

This fake letter states - “Hi Prasad, this device is not for South Indian people. Thank you”. It is written in the same dotted font that Nothing has been using across its promo materials so this led to most watchers thinking that this was the real deal. Prasadtechintelugu was essentially protesting against the lack of review units of the Nothing Phone (1) provided to regional content creators.

Given that sending out review units is the company’s prerogative and up to its discretion, many tech content creators have complained in the past against other companies for ignoring certain sections of them. With Nothing, thanks to Prasadtechintelugu, the flack came from the South Indian community.  

Once the screenshot of the fake letter started spreading online, many users who had been waiting for the device mistook it as an official letter from the company leading to a spate of angry tweets and criticism with accusations of Nothing favoring Hindi content creators over regional ones.

Nothing has officially responded to this incident. Given that they had nothing to do with the letter, they might not either. But many Twitter users are still unaware that the letter is fake and the hashtags are still trending as of the time of writing this report.

Also Read: Nothing Phone (1) launched: How much are you going to pay in India?

Also Read: Nothing Phone (1) is finally official: Here are all the details