There’s bad. There’s really bad. There’s Chinese-ripoff-bad. And then there’s OnePlus. I am going to break my vow not to mention the company — a vow that I just made on Twitter — to talk about OnePlus once. Then I’ll shut up. Forever. I won’t acknowledge their existence, answer questions about them, or read posts (or even titles) that mention them. Because that would be fueling the rage that is OnePlus, and I don’t plan on doing that. Well, not until I am done with this post anyway.

I am not new to covering the mobile industry. I have been following it for 8 years now, which doesn’t make me a veteran, nor does it make me a newcomer. I’m old enough to know that the smartphone existed long before the iPhone and Android, to recognize the word Psion, and to tell you that S40 is not Symbian, but S60 is, because that is how we rolled back then.

To say that I have read, researched, and followed a lot of mobile companies would be a bit of an understatement. Did you know that Samsung actually tried to make a Symbian smartphone a few times (the same Symbian that Nokia rode its victory laps on for years), but failed to really sell the darn thing? But I digress.

In my 8 years, I haven’t seen anything as obnoxiously ambitious, ridiculously over-hyped, poorly amateurish, or terribly flawed as OnePlus. I don’t plan on discussing the company’s One phone here — I haven’t tried it to share my opinion — it may be good, it may be bad, that is not the point. My point is the company.

With almost a non-existing budget for marketing, it managed to create buzz over a promise: Never Settle. The plan was to release a device with such high specs at such an affordable price that you wouldn’t have to settle. Sure, when the phone’s real specs started showing up, it was clear that there were compromises (like on every smartphone out there). For an excellent price, you would actually be settling, but by then, everyone was rooting for this underdog who was willing to change the status-quo, and the company had already amassed a certain following, that it had almost reached cult status.

Then the mistakes started pouring in.

• Smash your existing expensive phone to get a cheaper OnePlus One. Because, obviously, you couldn’t sell your phone, donate it to charity, give it to your relatives, or use it as a bedside clock and picture frame for Pete’s sake, and then get a One Plus? The contest was later modified.
• Then they let us know you will need an invite to buy the phone, because a cult status, like rarified air, needs you to make the effort to get to it.
• Then the phone starts shipping without a charger or box, and they said that will be rectified later.
• Then there are yellow screen issues, software issues, and more.
• Then there’s today’s sexist contest, asking only women to post selfies to win invites. Because that is what women do, amirite? That has obviously been retracted too.

It gets so bad that sometimes I wonder: is it intentional? Honestly, a company couldn’t be that oblivious, could it? Do they really not have someone in their board meetings go, “Oh no, that **it won’t fly with most of our customers!” Or do they simply sit there, figure out the absolute worst strategy they can and then execute it, because any publicity is good publicity, and free bad publicity with zero marketing budget is the best they can afford?

It does make you stop and wonder. Clever devilish strategy vs offensive amateur mistakes. Which is it?

What bothers me however is that, regardless of the drive behind OnePlus’ behavior, we (the global we), in the tech coverage industry, keep fueling their cult status. Just try mentioning the words “OnePlus invite” in a tweet and wait for the deluge of people asking you to send one to them, because they “badly need to buy the phone.” We made them want the phone, not OnePlus. Without us, no one would have ever heard about the company or their phone. We kept writing about them, giving them more time under the spotlight, more free publicity (even the bad kind), more keystrokes on our keyboards, more bandwidth in our servers, than they ever deserved.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t a company have to actually prove itself before it got so much attention and free karma? Didn’t Samsung have to roll up its sleeves and try time after time to get our attention until it finally managed to do so with the Galaxy S? Or LG with the G2? When did we start giving our gratuitous nods of approval to every little company under the sun? Or are we simply looking for the most sensational stories, and OnePlus managed (incredibly cleverly, might I presume) to find that vice in us — the vice that Jolla, Firefox, Tizen, and all the other underdogs never dared or wanted to trigger?

Maybe I am giving OnePlus more credit than they deserve. Maybe they really do not have the slightest idea about what they are doing, or maybe they stumbled by mistake on that brilliantly bad strategy and decided to try the recipe again and again, but regardless, I think they are overplaying their hand. The balance has tipped far enough and long enough in the “bad” direction that it’s hard to ignore it, no matter how cult-enamored, doe-eyed, and never settling you are. At one point, we will stop caring. I know I have many months ago. I’m done. Drops mic.