Nupe vs. Nupe: No FREE Attention for Alan Roger Currie from Kevin Samuels
A rift between two members of Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Inc. which has been simmering for two years finally reached its peak this past week on YouTube streams on Wednesday and Thursday
As of Friday, February 11, 2022, you can officially say that there is no love lost between two African-American YouTubers who just happen to both be members of a historical Black Greek Organization that was founded on January 5, 1911, on the campus of Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana.
The “Plaintiff,” so to speak, involved in the dispute: Book Author and Popular Dating Coach for Men, Alan Roger Currie.
Currie is best known for his books, Mode One: Let the Women Know What You’re REALLY Thinking and No FREE Attention: How Women use The Possibility of Sex to Manipulate Naïve and Lustful Men
Currie was also known for being the host of a popular show on the BlogTalkRadio Internet Radio Network titled Upfront & Straightforward with Alan Roger Currie between 2007 and 2016. Currie also was once an award-winning standup comedian in the Chicago metropolitan area in 1989 and 1990, performing on stage with the likes of the late great Robin Harris and Bernie Mac, In Living Color star Damon Wayans, and CBS Talk Show Co-Host Sheryl Underwood. Currie has been interviewed on national television, including by Oprah Winfrey in February 1987, as well as nationally syndicated broadcast radio a number of times.
Currie was also the first African-American dating coach to be a featured speaker internationally, speaking in London, England in November 2010 and Berlin, Germany in April 2013. In 2017, Currie was the very first African-American featured speaker at The 21 Convention, a major Worldwide Manosphere conference and event held every year in Orlando, Florida.
The #1 knock on Currie, based on comments from men who are active in what is known on the internet as The Black Manosphere, is that he is somewhat of an egoist and narcissist who is extremely overprotective of his Mode One™ and Direct Approach Dating Coaching™ brand as well as extremely territorial over the seemingly unique content and talking points found in his five major books.
The “Defendant” involved in the dispute: YouTube and Instagram personality and podcasting superstar Kevin Samuels.
Samuels is most recently known for his Instagram chat with famed female rapper Nicki Minaj, his co-starring role in rapper Future’s video, The Worst Day, and his one-on-one interview with Instagram model and social media superstar Brittany Renner.
Samuels currently has accumulated 1.4 million subscribers on his YouTube channel as well as 1.1 million followers on his Instagram page. Samuels has also been mentioned in ELLE magazine, MADAMNOIRE magazine, and TheGrio magazine.
The #1 knock on Samuels, based on comments from essentially the same Black men active in the above-mentioned Black Manosphere is that nothing about his commentary during his livestreams is original or unique, and that he has been frequently accused of borrowing (or more so, ‘stealing’) popular talking points from such Black male YouTubers as Tommy Sotomayor, Valdez a.k.a. ‘The Angryman,’ Jason Black, among a few others.
Currie, who is generally considered the first official African-American “O.G.” in the Worldwide Manosphere and Pickup Artist and Attraction & Seduction Community after his first eBook version of Mode One was made available in May 1999, first became associated with the aforementioned Black Manosphere after connecting with controversial Black male YouTuber Mumia Obsidian Ali in fall of 2015, and later Angryman and Oshay Duke Jackson in 2016. It was Jackson who persuaded Currie to begin podcasting on YouTube in April 2017. Currie also used to be a featured writer on Jackson’s website titled The NegroManosphere.com.
Samuels first developed a presence on YouTube and in The Black Manosphere sometime in either late 2016 or early 2017, and he started out as a contributor to many discussions on a popular Saturday late night stream (usually lasting eight hours) on YouTube hosted by the faceless BGS IBMOR (‘faceless’ denotes that BGS IBMOR does not ‘cam up’ and show his face on his YouTube livestreams). Samuels initial focus was promoting men’s cologne and offering advice to Black men about how to better groom themselves and how to choose top quality clothing and suits.
Currie and Samuels first began communicating in June 2017, when Samuels sent Currie the e-mail message below on June 3, 2017, with the following greeting:
Good Day Alan,
I am a professional menswear stylist, social media influencer, and fellow YouTuber. My viewers have expressed a real desire to hear more things about dating, relationships, sex, and the like, so I thought I would reach out to you to see how we could possibly work together. Let’s see what we can do to continue to grow our respective brands, build our businesses, and assist men who are in need of our advice, expertise, and services. It should go without saying, but I do nothing for free with my clients, similar to yourself, so there is no “hook up” type stuff at all in my DNA. I look forward to hearing from you Nupe.
YITB
The “YITB” represents a courteous close and valediction used by members of Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Inc. (“YITB” stands for “Yours in The BOND”), which Currie and Samuels are a part of. Currie was initiated into the fraternity in November 1982 at the fraternity’s “Alpha Chapter” (which means the campus where the fraternity was founded), and Samuels was initiated into the same fraternity on the campus of the University of Oklahoma (Zeta Omega chapter) in spring 1988. Currie pledged with eleven other men, while Samuels Crossed the Burning Sands by himself.
The two ‘Nupes’ — which is a nickname for those members of Kappa Alpha Psi who are loved and respected by their fellow fraternity members — maintained a cordial, friendly, and respectful relationship with one another throughout 2018 and 2019, but their relationship took a turn after Currie viewed a livestream hosted by Samuels on February 2, 2020, which happened to be Super Bowl Sunday of that year.
On the livestream, Samuels was heavily marketing himself to his viewing audience as a professional dating coach for single heterosexual men - just like Currie had been since the early 2000s - and Currie became irritated that Samuels was advertising that part of his expertise for men was helping them with their verbal communication skills, body language reading skills, and even verbal seduction skills, in addition to his primary area of expertise which was helping men with their grooming, posture, and choices in professional suits and other men’s clothing.
A few days later, February 6, 2020, Currie recorded and uploaded a response video on his YouTube Channel asking Samuels with an underlying tone of anger, “What are you . . . an Image Consultant and Clothing Specialist for men? or a Dating Advice Coach and Verbal Communications Coach for men? and just when did you become an ‘expert’ on verbal communication skills with women?”
That video pretty much left their fading friendship extremely strained, with the two having no further e-mail contact with each other after the video was posted on Currie’s channel. Then, approximately five months later, Currie recorded and uploaded another video with him being harshly critical of Samuels, this time regarding the latter’s interview with a dating coach who goes by the pseudonym Alpha Male Strategies (AMS). Currie and AMS began beefing in late March or early April of 2018 when many of Currie’s clients, followers, and Patreon financial supporters began accusing AMS of repeating and regurgitating much of Currie’s unique talking points and original content from his 2012 book titled The Possibility of Sex: How Naive and Lustful Men are Manipulated by Women Regularly.
In January 2021, Currie did balance out the tone of the two previously mentioned videos by recording and uploading a video singing the praises of Samuels “strategic business sense” that allowed Samuels to grow his YouTube channel from less than 100,000 subscribers to a half million subscribers in less than a year. Samuels did not comment on the video, nor did he send Currie a ‘thank you for the kudos’ e-mail message.
Now, let us fast forward to Wednesday evening, February 9, 2022.
Currie stated that at approximately 10:00 PM CST or so this past Wednesday evening, he began receiving messages from many of his YouTube subscribers with comments like, “ARC . . . Kevin Samuels is repeating the title of your 2012 eBook and audiobook, ‘The Possibility of Sex,’ on his livestream tonight.”
Currie went to bed that night pleased with the idea that Samuels was once again giving his book an enthusiastic endorsement, given that Samuels had done so during a livestream on November 1, 2021 on one of his livestreams.
Early on Thursday morning, Currie awoke to many more messages from his YouTube subscribers, only this time, their tone was more critical. “ARC, yes . . . Kevin Samuels did mention the title of your 2012 eBook and audiobook, but he did not truly give the book an ‘endorsement’ nor did Kevin mention your name specifically” was what at least three YouTube subscribers wrote in a message to Currie.
Currie did not necessarily care about not having his name mentioned by Samuels, because Samuels had mentioned the title of Currie’s book before on his livestreams without mentioning Currie by name. So, on Thursday morning February 10, 2022, Currie uploaded a very short marketing video on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok that included an audio clip of Samuels discussing the title of Currie’s book, The Possibility of Sex.
Then later in the morning on Thursday, Currie received an e-mail message from the Black male YouTuber known as Ramil Amyr, who once in 2020 labeled Currie “The G.O.A.T.” of all dating coaches for men in both the Worldwide Manosphere and the Black Manosphere and who also once collaborated with Samuels for a podcast series titled ‘The Lion’s Den.’
Amyr notified Currie that he was preparing to go live on YouTube with harsh criticisms of Samuels, and Currie initially attempted to dissuade Amyr from doing so. Currie told Amyr, “I don’t mind that Kevin Samuels did not mention my name in his livestream last night. As long as he mentioned the title of my book, I am cool with that.”
At approximately 9:00 AM CST on Thursday morning, Amyr went live on YouTube with Currie listening from the chat room. It was during this livestream that Currie’s attitude changed from indifferent to livid. Amyr played an audio clip of Samuels’ opening comments during his Wednesday evening livestream. During his opening comments, Samuels made it clear that he had no legal obligation to give Currie any sort of ‘proper credit attribution,’ which is usually submitted to published authors with copyrighted material.
Without repeating Samuels’ additional comments in length verbatim, what Samuels went on to express is that he essentially does not respect the concept of non-fiction self-help authors claiming ‘intellectual property ownership’ over their own content and talking points within the realm of dating advice and relationships advice. Samuels went on to express that he believes that all dating advice falls under the category of ‘fair use,’ and that no one author or no individual self-help guru should be able to monopolize their own unique content, their own unique talking points, or even the titles of their books.
Currie became extremely angered listening to Samuels’ commentary about copyright infringement, intellectual property ownership, and plagiarism. Currie went on to say that not only did he feel insulted and offended by Samuels’ commentary on the subject, but he expressed that all non-fiction self-help authors with copyrighted published material should feel insulted and offended by Samuels commentary on the subject.
Currie especially took exception to Samuels’ assertion that no author or self-help guru can truly “copyright their talking points.” Currie vehemently disagrees.
The United States Library of Congress explains that no author can copyright a general or universal subject, a general or universal topic of discussion, or a general or universal concept, idea, or philosophy.
On the other hand, any copyrighted and published author can claim ownership over their unique manner of expressing themselves, their unique terminology, their unique concepts, ideas, and personal philosophies, and their unique signature phrases. As you can easily surmise, the key word is “unique.” Again, no published author can claim ‘intellectual property ownership’ if their content and talking points can objectively be proven to be ‘too general’ and ‘too universal.’
For example, if an author writes and publishes a book about the subject of “Monogamy vs. Polyamory vs. Promiscuity,” that author cannot lay claim to ‘ownership’ of that subject as a whole. Any non-fiction author would be free to discuss that subject.
Where the copyright comes into play is in regard to what one author specifically has to say about the subject of “Monogamy vs. Polyamory vs. Promiscuity.” In other words, you cannot repeat and regurgitate a published author’s content and talking points in a word-for-word verbatim manner (or in a paraphrased manner that is very close to being a verbatim quote of the original author) without giving the original author what is known as proper credit attribution.
When someone refuses to give a published author proper credit attribution for their works, they will immediately be labeled by academic scholars and highly intellectual types as both a copycat and a plagiarist, and in many cases, they can be sued in civil court for copyright infringement and intellectual property theft.
The situation, where it stands now, comes down to this: Currie cannot form a legitimate copyright infringement case or intellectual property theft case against Samuels simply because Kevin Samuels blatantly refused to give him proper credit attribution for repeatedly using the title of his 2012 book, The Possibility of Sex, during his livestream this past Wednesday evening.
The only time that Currie would have a legitimate copyright infringement lawsuit or intellectual property theft legal case against Samuels is if Kevin were to begin lifting word-for-word verbatim portions of Currie’s book and begin presenting the directly quoted content from Currie’s book in a manner that makes it seem as though it is Samuels’ original material. Again, no one can present material and talking points from a published author’s copyrighted book without giving that published author his or her proper credit attribution. If one does so, he or she is always to be categorized at minimum as a copycat, and at maximum as a plagiarist.
We shall see how things play out between Currie and Samuels for the remainder of 2022 and beyond, legally and otherwise.
