“I say this humbly—but I’m as talented as fuck,” Kevin Hart recently told the Times of London.

I’m no stranger to negative feedback.” In fact, Hart claims to have grown in recent years—specifically, since the resurfacing of the years-old homophobic tweets that ultimately compelled him to step down from hosting the 2019 Oscars.

It’s about the intent behind what you say—there’s an assumption it’s always bad and, somehow, we forgot comedians are going for the laugh.

You’re not saying something to make people angry.

I’m trying to make you laugh and if I did not make you laugh I failed.

Where people were supposed to operate perfectly all the time?...I don’t understand.

That’s not how I operate...I understand people are human?

It’s like jail.

But if they come out and people go, ‘I’m not giving you a job because you were in jail’—then what the fuck did I go to jail for.

That was my punishment — how do you not give those people a shot.

(Are we really comparing homophobic tweets made by a man the Times reports is worth $200 million to being incarcerated and subsequently unemployable after paying one’s debt to society?) However, many on social media were less than amused by the comedian’s stance, considering it an indication that Hart had perhaps not grown much, after all.

“I put everybody in the fucking building...We all come into this building Kevin Hart is in and we all laugh

But it’s still OK not to like it, right