Josh Ostrovsky, better known on the web as the Fat Jew, made TIME’s list of the most influential people on the Internet this year because brands were shelling out big bucks to get the attention of his audience. The only problem is, as TIME noted, comedians have long accused Ostrovsky of ripping off their jokes and posting them without credit.
The backlash against him has renewed since last Thursday, when the 30-year-old signed a deal with CAA, one of Hollywood’s top talent agencies. A man named Kevin Kelly assembled a Storify post featuring fifty jokes Ostrovsky has posted without attribution alongside their sources, while comedians such as Michael Ian Black and Paul Scheer have spoken out against Ostrovsky on Twitter. One Facebook post calling Ostrovsky out, from Maura Quint, was widely circulated:
…The Fat Jew is someone whose entire career is simply stealing jokes from tumblr, twitter, etc. He is making a living off of the hard work of other people. 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. When called out on his continued theft he either ignores it, says “whoops” or says “geez I guess an intern stole it!”…
The backlash appears to be making an impact now. Comedy Central confirmed to the website Splitsider that it is no longer developing a project with Ostrovsky, though the network told Entertainment Weekly that the it fell through “several months ago.” A rep for Seamless, which featured Ostrovsky in an marketing campaign, told Death and Taxes that the company has “no current plans to work with him in the future” but that it was “unable to comment” on the plagiarism accusations.
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