Trying to explain simple bad decision making with some kind of grand marketing strategy that involves incredible amounts of wasted work and huge amounts of coordination and the silence of hundreds of people is the most reddit thing ever.

People made the same conspiracy theory about New Coke.

Coke's response:

"Some cynics will say that we planned the whole thing. The truth is we're not that dumb and we're not that smart."

There are too many things wrong with that theory to be plausible. The same is true here.

Yeah I feel like they are almost certainly putting this design out to create some buzz. I can't picture them releasing this hideous thing as-is.

Using a marketing conspiracy theory with about 10,000 holes in it to explain an ugly design is not what I would consider a "good point".