 Hey there, lovers and friends, I just want to address two elephants in the room off the top. Number one, I want to direct your attention to the title of this video. You don't have to watch this. If you are of the school of thought that I shouldn't discuss this or drag this on any longer, if you are of the school of thought that the one commentary I had should be enough, then let that be enough for you. And if you feel like you'd collect all the information that you're comfortable with, you don't have to stay. There is no pressure whatsoever to continue this dialogue or discussion with me. Secondly, I just want to say I've been wearing a lot of hats of late because I did a keratin treatment, a non-toxic organic keratin treatment, but nonetheless, I haven't really quite figured out who my hair wants to be right now. So we're just wearing hats for a bit. That to be said, I did want to reopen the discussion around the real myself and Lonnie. Lonnie Love appropriately named just because as I've collected more information over these past couple of days and examined what's been going on, my perspective changes and thus the conversation to me should change to follow suit. Also taking into account where I stoked the fire in a way to create a response that I actually did not want and is not a reflection of the kinds of communication that I want any people to have, whether that is myself or you, my people, my community. I don't want us to be participating in dialogues that have been going on and the negativity and the hate. And I think a lot of the things that we don't like, we've turned around and done to somebody else. And it's actually really, really fucked up and really wrong. And that's what I wanted to examine further today. And then again, take responsibility for how myself, how I contributed to this culture that I don't like being a part of in life. What has been a really freeing thing for me to acknowledge is that whenever somebody's reaction doesn't match the stimulation, the effect doesn't match the cause, I always just zoom out and say, oh, because it has nothing to do with that direct cause. So whenever you see somebody respond out of turn to something, even in public, if you bump somebody and they have a super big reaction that's not really logical based on the innocence of the bump, know that their reaction has nothing to do with you. They are shouting at their ex-wife or they are shouting at their boss. You happen to be the person who's in front of them and that's what you have to equate that to. We do this for children all the time, right? If a child starts acting out, we don't go to like, you're an awful person. You're an asshole. How could you do this? We think they haven't slept. They haven't eaten recently. Yesterday, they had a situation at daycare. What have you like, we start to really look backwards to really figure out, okay, those two things didn't match up. So what was really happening there and how do we not jump to the fact that this person is bad and this person is good, et cetera. So what I've watched happen online in both cases is I think when I watched the clip of the reel, Lonnie's reaction to me doesn't match the stimulus, right? Like we're not people who know each other. There's not a lot of like negativity that should have been spewed the way that it is. It didn't match up. So I have to examine that. On the flip side, my tearful reaction did not match the stimulus. It made zero sense and I think there's something to examine in that as well too. Now I think what people have done is they have examined it through the lens of Lonnie is a colorist and she is a racist and she is jealous. And on the flip side, people have examined my overreaction through the lens of Shan is a manipulator. She is a hater of dark skin women and she's used as an opportunity to try to position herself as perfect and try to sympathy longer. And if you want to go with those two truths, sure. I don't think that that's logical and I think I kind of want to unpack why. So I'll start with Lonnie and the reel. So a lot of people in the comment section said, you know, she's just reacting out of jealousy. She's just reacting because you're lighter. When you really think about it and you watch that clip, she never saw me when she gave her first reaction. You know, when she was initially hearing about this idea that I was going around with cue cards, telling people what to say on dates, she didn't look at me at all. She had no idea. She's just like facing straight ahead the audience. That is why she says after she makes a comment, that's white people stuff and people like she's not white. She's like, Oh, bring up that picture again. And why would she have a negative reaction to the information that was fed? I as I have, as I understand it, Lonnie was single for a very long time. And as a result, became the voice for single women to say like, fuck the pressure. Fuck people saying that you have to be in a relationship, like love yourself, look after yourself, find joy in yourself and partnership can or cannot come. But you are enough by yourself. I think that's a lot of what her messaging is. So when she hears from Adrian that here's this girl who's telling people to save a cue cards on dates, that just goes so intrinsically against what her belief system is. That to her is an interpretation of me telling women they're not enough by themselves. They have to go to extreme lengths to find partnership. They have to lie and be untrue to themselves. So a lot of people are like you cried because you wanted to fire up people in a negative way against Lonnie. I never saw the clip before that reaction. And this is a classic mistake that I made that I would advise people against after a breakup, take your phone away. After you get fired from a job, take your phone away or whatever it is, like those initial emotional reactions are never going to be best case scenario. They're not going to be based on fact. And again, I'm making a video response to a video I haven't seen. I have come to this really amazing and freeing place. And while I am telling you from the bottom of my heart, my response had nothing to do with colorism, especially the tearful response. Again, like I said, I at that point did not know who said what I cannot deny that colorism is not a part of this dialogue and how people have responded to this. And we have to take this in as an opportunity to really examine why we react the way we react to one person versus another. I can say for me, the privilege that I have seen in this is a lot of the times people attack me based on my choices, like what I chose to say, the profession that I chose, the line of work that I chose, like a lot of the time I'm having to defend myself. It's really about me picking to present myself in a certain light on a certain topic. Whereas in the comments about Lonnie, a lot of them I saw have to do the thing that she has no control over, which is her race and her color of skin and all of the associations that the audience member or individuals pin that have nothing to do with what she actually said or did. And that's heartbreaking and hard for a lot of us to understand who don't have to exist in that space or in that way. But there is a channel that I actually really enjoyed watching. I think I've actually watched her videos before and she made a video response to the entire thing that I thought was illuminating. So you may want to check that out for a different perspective. And number two, there needs to be more responsibility of a call to action. I did not tell you guys what I wanted you to do and I can rest on that as a, well, I didn't tell people to be negative and to go harass Lonnie. I didn't tell people to do that, but I also didn't tell you not to, right? I also didn't say to you again what I'm saying now of let's look at this whole perspective. And so again, when I peel back all of the different layers and interpretations, I can look at this and say, here's two women who are passionate about love connection and relationships who in this moment felt like the other person was trying to tear down the perspective that they built. She has built up a perspective and a brand on supporting single women and allowing them to feel like you are enough. I have built up a brand and perspective around make space this area in your life, try, try different things. Fundamentally, it's about building up yourself and loving who you are, but ultimately the same way that your career, you're going to go after it because in an intentional way, cause you want good results. I want the same thing relationship wise. I think that underneath it all, we're saying the same things, but in that moment, it didn't seem that way and her reaction was to that. And my reaction was to, why do you see negative in me when I'm just trying to do good? That's the simple of it. Maybe I'll just edit the video town for it to be just that. The final thing that I want to address is I always sort of exist in this bizarre space because I really just talk about one topic and I branched out when I first started YouTube, it was just sex, sex, sex. And I sort of learned that if I want to be the Walmart reader, if I want to be the person who gets the average individual invested and involved, I have to acknowledge that sex is not most people's entry point. Most people's entry point is just relationships. It is dating. It is love. And then sex is a byproduct of that being in good standing. So I have evolved that conversation in that way. And maybe there's something to be said around the issue of race relations. I'm not an expert in the space. I haven't researched it. But I do know that as much as I am not a black woman, I am mixed with black and I have black family that I love and admire as much as I am not an Indian woman. I am mixed with Indian and I love Indian people and I love my Indian family as much as I am not a white woman. I love my chosen white family and I see myself in white people. I see myself in black women. I see myself in Indian women in Asian. I don't have as far as I know. I have never done my 21 and me, but I see in my chosen family, I see myself in you too. And so my perspective of being mixed, is there some positivity that I can bring around trying to have a conversation that is just about people listening to each other, just about sharing your experiences and your biases and hearing each other not in an environment of attack. All that to say in Cole's notes way. Number one, please do not harass, bother, name call or make outlandish statements about anyone that I discuss that is not the goal of me doing this. My goal is to provide perspective. I stand by what I said in my previous video. I think the joke that Lonnie made was lame. I understand why she attacked my perspective. I'm a little exhausted of being attacked, but I'm also acknowledging that that's a part of the course that I chose. Number two, I was whack as hell for crying and putting that up before I'd watched the video. Just it really did stoke the fire and it created this need to protect me because I looked very vulnerable and I didn't have the information and I just didn't need to do that and I've learned a lesson in terms of if I am, because y'all know I'm a cry and ass motherfucker. I cried all over YouTube. I cry when I'm happy. I cry when I'm sad. So that's a part of my natural expression. And if I am going to, I'm not going to apologize for tears, but it only can be applicable if I have all the facts. Otherwise it can be really dangerous and really igniting in a negative way. And I'm deeply apologetic for that. And I feel badly about the reaction that that has caused and how that has made people, I think, feel a need to protect me in a way to attack someone else, not the wave. And finally, love y'all. I really do. I really do love my community and I love being a YouTuber for this reason. I think that the traditional way of dealing with all of these things is that you stop talking about it and that you remove yourself. But I get to have a YouTube channel that nobody tells me when to wrap it up. Nobody tells me how long it can be or how short it can be or how often I can talk about something. And I get to exist with individuals who are also interested in examining and I learn so much from you. And I don't know what's a joyful experience and I just want to continue to share what I have gained through listening with all of you and through enhanced dialogue. You know, the unexamined life is not worth living. And I love examining life with you and I want to continue to do that. And I will always look for ways to get better and be more efficient. So I again, I'm going to change the thumbnail and the title of the previous video. I think that I took down the crying video days and days ago, like literally the day I put my YouTube video up, I took that down because it just didn't like the comments that was getting underneath it. It just wasn't again, they didn't match what happened. So nothing else needs to be done. The only thing that we can do now is to continue to examine how we as a community want to better address these conversations. And I will say in the comment section below, what I do want to ask you is, is there a podcast? Is there a YouTube series where we bring together people of different racial backgrounds or ethnicities or shades, etc. Just people who have different perspectives just to listen to each other. This would obviously be something I would just cast for. I would get people just to come almost like Jubilee, the channel, which I adore. It is just using my space to give other people a chance to communicate. Is that something that we want to do that we're interested in? Do you not feel this is the place for that? So how do we continue to understand without attacking each other for our differences? And can this platform be a tool in achieving that goal? That's what I want to discuss in the comment section below. Happy Thanksgiving. I love you. Thank you. Bye.