The Fat Jew’s Instagram plagiarism scandal, explained

Josh Ostrovsky, better known on social media as the portly, oft-nude personality the Fat Jew (@FatJewish), is the drain swirl of everything you hate about the internet.

Over the past month, Ostrovsky has come under fire for lifting jokes from other people on the internet, mainly comedians. While internet joke theft is so common that Twitter has instituted a copyright policy against it, Ostrovsky stands out because of how successful “his” lifted jokes have made him. He has more than 5.7 million followers on Instagram, reportedly makes $6,000 from brands when he gives them a shout-out on social media, is an aspiring male model (with a contract), signed with the same talent agency that represents Meryl Streep, served as the face of food-ordering app Seamless, and until very recently was set to make his own show at Comedy Central.

This isn’t the first time he’s been caught stealing others’ material. And perhaps the most depressing thing about this whole saga is that his fans don’t seem to care.

Ostrovsky is a social media celebrity, a person who is famous for his Instagram account. Why or how someone becomes a celebrity by posting pictures on an app with a caption is a murky process involving the disruption of celebrity culture, the rise of the Kardashians, and a pact with Satan. Ostrovsky’s journey to fame began in 2013 and early 2014 when he appeared in a video in which he taught homeless people in Manhattan an exercise class on the Citibike, New York City’s bike-sharing system:

Back then he went by the name Fabrizio Goldstein. “I go [by] 10,000 different names so people are consistently confused what to call me,” Ostrovsky told the New York Post in 2014. “Fabrizio Goldstein, Joshua Onassis, Jewson Surandon, or Fatrick Jewing…In the bedroom, I like to go by Bruce.”

Ostrovsky’s brand of humor wraps itself around the idea of satirizing rich white people and his own body — a uncovered nipple here, a pallid thigh there. In 2015 he teamed with fellow social media celebrity David Oliver Cohen (@Whitegrlproblem) to create a wine called White Girl Rosé to address the “rosé shortage” in the Hamptons.

Ostrovsky’s Instagram feed is a bit different in that it’s less about him and generally more meme-ish stuff, with jokes about hangovers, celebrities, college kids, and food:

What’s brilliant about these jokes is that they aren’t about Ostrovsky or what Instagram is intended to be at all. They’re about us, the audience. The jokes are infinitely shareable because they’re a way of telling the world that you’re having a bad day, or a great day, or that you’re grumpy. They’re cannily accurate but still general, not unlike how the perfect jeans you love were created along with millions of other pairs in a Vietnamese factory:

The jokes are funny and popular. But they aren’t Ostrovsky’s.

Pittsburgh-based comedian Davon Magwood brought the Fat Jew’s joke stealing to the spotlight last month when he called out Ostrovsky for ripping off a Cecil the lion/Ferguson joke that Magwood made. It wasn’t the first time Ostrovsky cribbed a joke, but Magwood’s post brought the most attention to it. Magwood made his joke in July (above), and the Fat Jew repeated it days after on Instagram:

“What is amazing is this all happened in 40 freaking hours! What is also amazing is how many big named accounts steal other peoples stuff,” Magwood wrote on his site. “The post has over 100k likes, after bunch of my friends and followers called him out, I was credited, my followers went up about 100 followers. Had he maybe credited me originally it could’ve been more and here is why that matters.”

Ostrovsky as yet hasn’t directly addressed Magwood’s allegations of joke theft, but has begun posting credits on some of his Instagram posts. This, however, isn’t the first time he’s been caught selling other people’s jokes as his own. In 2014, he was called out for stealing material and responded that the plagiarism was just a “blog”:

There are many more instances of Ostrovsky lifting material: There’s currently a Storify post going around of 50 jokes Ostrovsky has stolen. But the stolen jokes are just one half of the equation. If Ostrovsky had taken these jokes and never gotten anywhere with them, people wouldn’t have cared.

That didn’t happen.

Ostrovsky began getting famous, and last week signed with Creative Artists Agency, a talent agency that represents Meryl Streep, among others. Seamless made him its spokesperson. And perhaps the most egregious part of his success was that Comedy Central was ready to give him his own show based on “his” sense of humor, which we now know isn’t entirely his.

Comedy is a notoriously difficult industry. And the comedians Ostrovsky was stealing from would love to make the kind of money and achieve the kind of success he was achieving.

“He is making a living off the hard work of other people,” comedian Maura Quint wrote on August 15. “The people he steals from are struggling writers, comedians, etc. They would love to be able to profit from THEIR OWN WORK but can’t because this complete waste of a person is monetizing their words before they even have a chance to.”

At the height of this plagiarism scandal, the jobs and gigs Ostrovsky had secured began falling through. But the fallout, according to the companies, isn’t directly due to Ostrovsky’s plagiarism. Seamless said its campaign with Ostrovsky was always slated to end on September 1, while Comedy Central revealed that it had decided to drop its planned deal with him months ago.

But that didn’t stop people from celebrating what they felt was vindication:

What makes Ostrovsky a more interesting case than a standard plagiarist is where his popularity comes from. His posts are like Someecards (which has been accused of plagiarism too) or BuzzFeed posts like “30 Signs You’re 30.” They’re widely popular and shared because people who repost them feel like the jokes speak to some part of their personality or some cutting observation of the world that someone else made.

Now that Ostrovsky has been found out to be a joke burglar, will the cool thing be to make fun of everyone who reposts or links to the jokes he finds? Will your friend from high school whom you only keep in touch with on Facebook and who reposts him every day think twice about sharing his stuff? If the joke is hilarious, does it even matter to that friend that Ostrovsky didn’t write it?

The answer (for now) seems to be no. Ostrovsky posted a picture on Instagram yesterday. It has more than 200,000 likes.