Here's What The Fat Jewish Has Been up to Since His Plagiarism Controversy

In the late 2010s, it was hard to go on Instagram without seeing The Fat Jewish Instagram account. Josh Ostrovsky, the man behind the comedic account, started out by writing for VICE and posting absurd and often offensive videos online. He had to change his username multiple times because Instagram kept kicking him off the platform. That's how he became The Fat Jewish.

He once protested outside Instagram/Meta's corporate offices. It was the third time they'd taken his account off Instagram, and he'd had enough. Fifteen minutes later, his account was back up. He decided to go after a more mainstream audience, and that's when his account took off. He amassed a following by satirizing rich, white people and his own body, per Vox. But what's happened since his memes went viral?

Things were looking bright when Josh signed with CAA in 2015 and was set up to create a series with Comedy Central. He was a personality for E!, had a Sirius XM show, was a spokesperson for Seamless, and wrote a book that got banned from the New York Times bestseller list.

But then people started accusing him of stealing less popular comedians' jokes. People were especially upset because Josh was getting paid to do brand deals, so by stealing jokes to grow his audience, he was quite literally profiting off of other people's work.

After the plagiarism accusations started coming out, Josh was dropped from his Seamless deal and lost his show on Comedy Central. Here's what he's been up to since.

The Fat Jewish appeared on the Not Skinny But Not Fat podcast in 2024 to spill about what he's been up to. After joking that he was "like the Abraham Lincoln of memes," he said that he sold his meme-based alcohol company, BABE Rosé. He recently bought a monster truck league and plans to promote it himself.

Josh moved to Miami, got married, and had a son with his wife. He said that becoming a father made him want to slow down a bit. "I'm trying to actually, like, be an adult parent now," Josh said, before adding, "My background [on my phone] is like, my kid with a cigarette in his mouth."

He's still making absurd videos, but it's with his kid and only for his "close friends" list rather than the rest of his followers on Instagram. He offered the example that recently he'd done a series of his kid sitting in trash cans.

He's not making money off of it, but he can't resist making content. Josh added that his kid's entering school made him want to "get back in the mix" and buy the monster truck league.

When asked whether he plans on getting back on Instagram more publicly, Josh said that he's not really planning on posting regularly for a wide audience.