Photo courtesy of Youtube. 

It’s a sad day when online celebrity Josh Ostrovsky’s Twitter pseudonym, The Fat Jew (and on Instagram, The Fat Jewish), isn’t the most controversial thing about him. Ostrovsky has amassed a major social media following for his humorous text posts and photos, but over the last few weeks, several people have called his credibility into question. Led by Patton Oswalt, comedians attacked the self-proclaimed Z-lister for stealing jokes from other accounts and passing them off as his own.

Ostrovsky isn’t the only one taking others’ jokes. Users across various social media and creative content-sharing platforms have complained novelty or parody accounts infringe on their intellectual property. Even in smaller circles, one might rehash another user’s posts. Still, Ostrovsky remains the most prolific and eyebrow-raising, especially now that he’s signed with a major Hollywood talent agency. It seems more than unfair that he might make a career of his notoriety despite very little, if any, of it being earned by his own merit. 

In an Aug. 21 interview with Vulture, Ostrovsky admitted to his wrongdoing. He claimed he never intentionally meant to steal and placed most of the blame on his “army of interns,” but ultimately agreed to attributes every post he has shared. He’s largely followed up by including links to where he finds the content he posts. Unfortunately, he often extends credit only to other commentator and curator accounts like his — accounts just as guilty of blatant stealing as Ostrovsky has been. 

Sure, there are times when joke-stealing can be innocent. Sometimes an idea is common enough to have been thought up and posted by several users independently (for example, the hundreds of tweets about Donald Trump using his infamous “You’re fired” catchphrase when NBC cut ties with the Republican candidate this summer). One might even see a post, forget about it and later remember the idea and post it mistakenly assuming it to be his or her own. With Ostrovsky and his counterparts, though, this is clearly not the case: it’s a half-assed copy-and-paste job. Some even crop out an original poster’s username.

It’s hard to defend such practices, because they are obviously unethical, but social media sites like Twitter, Instagram and Tumblr allow and encourage sharing content issue-free via retweet, regram and reblog.

And it definitely doesn’t help that these online outlets have done little to crack down on plagiarizers. YouTube has been at the forefront of protecting copyright and trademark on the Internet, taking down videos that violate its terms of use at an incredible pace. Others are still playing a slow game of catch-up. On Twitter, any user can report copyright infringement by filling out a form and hoping the material is removed in a relatively timely fashion. Even if the content is taken down, users like Ostrovsky can appeal. Meanwhile, Instagram spends more time suspending accounts for female nudity than it ever does for shameless plagiarism.

It is particularly shocking that in the wake of all this criticism, Ostrovsky has failed to post anything resembling original content on any of his accounts. It begs the question: What’s the point of The Fat Jew’s existence (and other aggregator accounts) when the laughs can be found easily elsewhere?