What Goes Around: The Fat Jew’s Entire New Book Stolen and Posted To Twitter
I tend to determine when an internet phenomena has reached peak popularity based on whether my brother–who basically never leaves Red Hook–has texted me about it. Since he’s been sending me links to jokes on The Fat Jew’s (aka Josh Ostrovsky) Instagram for several months, I was aware that civilians find the guy to be a generally funny, amenable guy.
Over the summer, however, Ostrovsky started facing backlash about the way he sources his jokes–which is mostly from other people without crediting them. Yes, even in this wild and crazy new digital era, this amounts to plagiarism, and he faced quite a bit of criticism for it when he was signed to prestigious agency CAA. At the height of the backlash, Vulture ran an interview with him that seemed sort of rehabilitating. But can we ever really get past that White Girl Rosé thing?
Anyway, in a twist of fate that Ostrovsky’s haters are sure to find gleefully ironic, Death and Taxes points out that someone got a hold of his new book, Money Pizza Respect, and uploaded every single page on the internet via the Twitter account @updog7. The culprit takes credit for writing the book in his Twitter bio–much like The Fat Jew took credit for other people’s jokes!–and even uploaded the whole thing to a Google Drive for easier distribution and access.
http://twitter.com/updog7/status/662273145727004672?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Hopefully this fateful taste of his own medicine will help Ostrovsky become the “someone who can bridge the two sides” between “LOL everything on the internet is mine” and “LOL you stole my idea and livelihood” that he told Vulture he hopes to be. Download the book here before it gets pulled for copyright violation, and feel free to post the pages and jokes to your own Instagram with fun new captions. I’m confident that’s what Ostrovsky would want.