Tag Archives: Original Source

Last week, Instagram celebrity Josh Ostrovsky (better known as The Fat Jew) came under fire for allegedly stealing jokes  and posting them on his hugely popular Instagram page.  Now, in an exclusive interview with Vulture, Ostrovsky is speaking out for the first time on the accusation that he built a career by brazenly stealing the work of others. “At the end of the day, I get it: I should have been providing attribution for all posts,” Ostrovsky says. “It’s always been important to me. The internet is a vast ocean of stuff, and sometimes it’s hard to find the original source of something.  “Instagram started for me as something to connect me with people who were already my fans. But as the stage got larger, the practices being exploited at that time weren’t the right practices for a larger stage.” Ostrovsky’s apology is better than most celebrity mea culpas  in that while he does offer some lame excuses for his actions, he also offers a detailed strategy for how he intends to right his wrongs and prevent this sort of thing from ever happening again. Is it wrong to steal someone else’s joke and pass it off as your own? Absolutely. In all cases. But the Internet remains something of a lawless terrain in terms of intellectual property, and the rules of conduct don’t always keep pace with the advances in technology. So if The Fat Jew is willing to spread the message that it’s just not kosher (pun fully intended) to pilfer other people’s work without identifying the origin,  and  he can make good on his promise to refrain from doing this sort of thing in the future, we say why not give him another chance? After all, the guy knows his way around a witty caption, and unlike other IG celebs (We’re looking at you, Dan Bilzerian .) he at least offers something other than vapid lifestyle porn. Certain aspects of Ostrovsky’s online persona may be fake, but so is every boob on Bilzerian’s page . #TheMoreYouKnow

Original post:
The Fat Jew Speaks Out on Joke Theft Accusations: I Should Have Been Giving Credit