Josh Ostrovsky / The Fat Jew

About

Josh Ostrovsky, better known by his online nickname The Fat Jew, is an American comedian who rose to online fame through curation of humorous content on his Instagram and Twitter feeds. Despite his notably popular presence in the social media, Ostrovsky has been widely criticized for appropriating others jokes without attribution, including accusations of plagiarism from several stand-up comedians.

Online History

In June 2009, Ostrovsky launched the Twitter feed @fatjew,^[1] garnering upwards of 255,000 followers within seven years. On May 17th, 2010, Ostrovsky created The FatJewish YouTube channel.^[18] On October 11th, 2012, the @thefatjewish Instagram^[2] feed was launched, which gathered more than 5.6 million followers over the next three years. On November 27th, 2012, The FatJewish YouTube channel uploaded a sketch video in which prostitutes perform a scene from the 1995 historical drama film Braveheart (shown below). In the first four years, the video gained over 740,000 views and 400 comments. On November 29th, Redditor purdueracer78 submitted the video to /r/videos,^[3] where it gathered upwards of 3,100 votes (87% upvoted) and 300 comments prior to being archived.

On June 23th, 2014, the New York Post^[12] published an article about Ostrovsky, noting that he collects up to $2,500 for a sponsored Instagram post. In May 2015, the cover for Ostrovosky’s upcoming book Money, Pizza, Respect^[17] was released, featuring Ostrovsky dressed as former AppleCEO Steve Jobs (shown below).

Plagiarism Accusations

On January 19th, 2011, the pop culture blog Street Carnage^[7] published a post by co-founder Gavin McInnes, which referred to Ostrovsky as “the Carlos Mencia of Twitter” along with several examples of jokes that had been reposted without attribution.

On January 27th, 2015, The Washington Post^[11] published an article titled “Everyone’s stealing jokes online. Why doesn’t anyone care,” which listed Ostrovsky as an online personality known for reposting content without crediting the source. On July 30th, comedian Devon Magwood^[4] tweeted a joke referencing Cecil the Lion’s death (shown below, left). The following day, Ostrovsky reposted the joke on Instagram^[5] without attribution (shown below, right), where it garnered more than 194,000 likes and 15,300 comments in three weeks. On August 2nd, Magwood published an open letter^[6] requesting that Ostrovsky and Instagram user @FuckJerry properly credit the people they take content from.

On August 13th, The Hollywood Reporter^[8] published an article about Ostrovsky, revealing that the comedian had recently signed with the Creative Arts Agency. On August 15th, blogger Maura Quint posted a Facebook^[9] update linking to the article, which criticized Ostrovosky for making a career out of stealing other people’s jokes. The same day, comedian Patton Oswalt retweeted a screenshot of Quint’s Facebook post, followed by a series of tweets substituting the word “stealing” for “aggregating.”^[15] On August 16th, the @FitJew^[10] Twitter feed was launched, which retweets the original creators of jokes reposted by Ostrovosky. The same day, BuzzFeed^[14] published an article titled “People Are Accusing Instagram Star TheFatJewish of Stealing Their Jokes.” On August 17th, the Internet humor blog SplitSider^[13] reported that Comedy Central had canceled a project in development with Ostrovsky. The same day, The Daily Beast^[16] published an article about Ostrovsky titled “The Internet Plagiarist Taking Over the World.”

Personal Life

Ostrovsky was born on February 14th, 1985 in New York City, New York. After being expelled from both Skidmore College and New York University, he enrolled at the State University of New York at Albany.