Summary
- Dbrand is known for its sarcastic, snarky tone on social media, but this week, it crossed the line into outright racist remarks.
- After nearly 24 hours of backlast, Dbrand apologized to the customer it offended, alongside a payment of $10k
- Dbrand plans to continue making fun of customers on social media, but hopefully will avoid offensive remarks in the future to save face.
For the last decade-plus, we’ve had to sit through brands developing personalities, specifically through their social media presence. Thanks to all sorts of viral moments and interactions from your favorite store-bought cookies or breakfast cereal, companies have gotten good at pretending they’re just like you. In the tech world, no brand has shown more spunk on social media and beyond than Dbrand, an attitude that landed them in hot water over the past 24 hours after throwing around some particular racist comments.
I’m not going to beat around the bush here — what Dbrand said is pretty egregious, even for the company’s usual snarky demeanor. After a customer named Bhuwan Chitransh tweeted at the site regarding their MacBook skin showing dirt after a couple months of use, Dbrand first offered a real response, before turning around seven minutes later and quote-tweeting the complaint with a comment centered around Chitransh’s last name.
Despite gaining 30k likes — big shock, considering the state of Twitter these days — the company received plenty of backlash in the replies, with most of the 2,000 (and counting) replies issuing some pretty harsh rebukes. Chitransh, meanwhile, also hopped in the replies, calling out Dbrand for being racist towards Indian customers. Meanwhile, on Dbrand’s official subreddit, plenty of customers defended the tweet, saying the obviously racist remark wasn’t racist, which is effectively how we all talk on social media at this point.
After nearly 24 hours, Dbrand offered an apology
Dbrand hasn’t deleted its original racist comment (and seems to have no plans to), nor has it removed any of its replies doubling down on its original statement, but nearly a day after the incident, the company did finally post a follow-up. In its most recent tweet, the brand called the retweet a “huge fumble” while acknowledging it had apologized directly to Chitransh alongside a mea culpa payout of $10,000.
At the same time, Dbrand plans to continue “poking fun” at customers on social media, which may or may not involve more racist comments — who’s to say? There’s an obvious line between “being snarky online” and “making offensive remarks about a foreign-sounding last name online,” and with any luck, the company can land on the right side of that divide next time around. Hell, it’ll even save them a cool $10k in apology money. That’ll cover at least one more YouTube sponsorship.
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