OVER THE WEEKEND, you may have noticed people on Twitter complaining about someone called The Fat Jew.
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But who is he? And why are people so mad at him?
Allow us to explain.
First of all, who is The Fat Jew? Does he call himself that?
The Fat Jew — real name Josh Ostrovsky — is an insanely popular social media personality, comedian and rapper.
He has 5.7 million followers on Instagram and a further 255,000 on Instagram. His posts on Instagram regularly attract hundreds of thousands of likes and generally consist of memes and jokes.
For example, this post has 216,000 likes
And this has 231,000 likes.
You get the picture.
And, yes, he calls himself that.
Seems harmless enough. Why is everyone mad at him?
Basically, he has been accused of stealing content from other Twitter and Tumblr users, without giving proper credit.
Last week, he shared this tweet on Instagram.
thefatjewish / Instagram
But it was later discovered by a rather intrepid Twitter user that the @uptowndogfunk account was just a dummy account, and that the tweet had in fact been stolen.
Earlier this month, Twitter comedian Davon Magwood wrote an open letter detailing how The Fat Jew had taken one of his jokes without giving him the proper credit.
I posted a tweet that went viral a few days back: the image is of the cowardly lion from “The Wiz” and it says “Going to start dressing like a lion. That way cops know if they kill me. White people will avenge me.” That’s mine, I did that, even the grammar/punctuation issues are mine.
Thefatjewish posted my stuff and originally did not credit me. 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.
If it’s my stuff you’re posting, and if you give me credit, then I get traffic to my site, maybe that traffic goes to my comedy album and then I get paid for my work! You make money from the traffic you generate and guess what, I’d also would like to be paid and credited for the traffic that I’ve generated.
But if he has been doing this for so long, why has the backlash only started now?
Because The Fat Jew was signed to prestigious Hollywood agency CAA, the home of Sandra Bullock and George Clooney, last week, and reportedly has a TV show in development.
Ostrovsky is also looking for opportunities to bring his brand of comedy to television screens and currently has a pilot in development at Comedy Central.
Needless to say, many comedians have turned against him.
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Many were not okay with what they perceived as someone being rewarded for, well, plagiarism.
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What’s happening now?
People are calling for his head.
The Next Web has called on Apple to fire The Fat Jew from his Beats 1 radio show and many Twitter users have called on others to unfollow him.
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Even Patton Oswalt has weighed in.
For his part, The Fat Jew has not addressed the theft accusations.
Last night, however, he did post the following meme and gave credit to a Twitter user named @bertbondy.
Unfortunately, a quick glance at Twitter reveals @bertbondy to be yet another dummy account…
Don’t expect this to die down anytime soon, so.
