*In my 2005 Kanye West voice* Kevin Samuels doesn’t care about Black women.

(Well, he’s actually dead now so I guess I should be using the past tense.)

On Thursday night, YouTube Fragrance reviewer Kevin Samuels passed away. I’m not exactly sure what caused his passing and, to be brutally honest, I’m not interested in delving into police reports or social media posts about the circumstances leading up to his death. The only reason why I’m even writing this is because Samuels found brief e-fame when he decided in 2020 to transition his YouTube business model away from assessing popular eau de toilettes to a far more engaging topic: publicly shitting all over Black women. For the past two years, Samuels leveraged this content to quickly rise from being another internet nobody, to esteemed musty-nigga relationship expert. Over the pandemic quarantine he transformed from Steve Urkel to Stephon Urkelle by calling fat Black women linebackers and full-backs, women over 35 “leftover women”, and consistently reminding the Black women who called into his show that they were “low value” and not deserving of the men they desired, all in front of cheering hordes.

Yet when news broke of his death, the reaction by many of the same women he used to routinely disrespect was, at least to me, predictably revelrous. It was bare bacchanal in the Twitter streets as Black women loudly guffawed at his demise. While I wasn’t really surprised by their response to him, what did surprise me was the amount of Black men who somehow figured that Black women needed to show this man compassion simply because he passed away.

The idea that Black women needed to show this man, who did nothing but publicly trash Black women with every ounce of breath he had in his lungs, even an inch of compassion is the stupidest fucking bullshit I’ve ever heard in my entire life.

In April 2010 when I decided to start my blog and fill it with articles calling people assholes, cunts, douchebags, fuckboys, broke bitches, etc. I accepted two truths that day: some people will LOVE the things I say and praise me for them, and some people will DETEST the things I say and hate me for them – and they are BOTH right. Kevin Samuels dedicated the latter part of his life to making hilarious comments and providing the internet with endless relationship fodder – mostly by degrading Black women. So today, some people are mourning his loss while others celebrate it – and they are BOTH right.

PLEASE LISTEN CAREFULLY: every muthafucking day, every single fucking one of us has a CHOICE about who we are going to be in this world. You have the CHOICE to be nice, you have the CHOICE to spread love, you have the CHOICE to be nothing but a lightning rod of positivity – and you have the CHOICE to be a dickhead. I think the real reason so many people are triggered by the response to his death is that so many of y’all think that YOU, who likes to go around “keeping it real” and spewing nothing but “the brutal truth”, are scared to death that folks will gladly dance on YOUR grave when YOU’RE gone. And y’all haven’t fully grasped that making the CHOICE to be an asshole means a gang of folks might do The Wop at your gravesite and you earned that.

I have made the latter choice, and I’m at peace with it. I am FAR from famous but I know I’ve angered enough people over the course of 12 years that some folks will loudly LOL at my demise. Every muthafucking day, a lot of y’all make that same CHOICE along with me but you don’t want to accept the accountability of your actions. WE ARE NOT VICTIMS.

If you’re sad that man is dead, you’re entitled to your grief. And if someone is happy he’s no longer around to spread malicious bullshit about them or people like them, they are entitled to their joy. It’s not hard.

This Is Your Conscience