Though some pretty rabid anti-Fat Jew sentiment had been bubbling under for a while, it really kicked up on Twitter this weekend, with dozens upon dozens of comedians weighing in on the Instagram darling, “content aggregator,” and blatant joke thief. Everyone from Michael Ian Black to Norm MacDonald called out The Fat Jew (real name Josh Ostrovsky), with Patton Oswalt taking him to task via a run of tweets that poked fun at the very concept of aggregation.
My favorite Jane’s Addiction song is “Been Caught Aggregating.”
— Patton Oswalt (@pattonoswalt) August 15, 2015
@thebenshow @FATJEW Theif!!!!!!!!!!
— Norm Macdonald (@normmacdonald) August 16, 2015
In a possibly unrelated note, Comedy Central has confirmed that the show it once had in development with Ostrovsky—who has about 5.5 million Instagram followers—is no longer on the table. Given that the show was first teased in 2014, that could have happened months ago, or it could have been a consequence of recent sentiment. Either way, good on them.
And while all that sentiment is certainly persuasive, especially for those who take what their favorite comedians say as law, the really damning evidence comes via a Storify post put together by a guy named Kevin Kelly. Using screencaps and embed codes, Kelly has compiled 50 blatant times the Fat Jew has absolutely passed off someone else’s joke as his own and without attribution. Kelly details how it happened each time, calling out Instagram crops, sloppy copy and pasting, and the uncreative ways that Ostrovsky re-combines old material into new Fat Jew memes. Individual examples were damning enough, but 50 examples together? Well that’s just ridiculous.