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Knocking the Hustle: The Rise of Internet ‘Curators’

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If you’re good at something, never do it for free.

This notion of profit before craft, purported by Heath Ledger’s Joker – surprisingly, not one of the Founding Fathers – seems to make the world go ‘round. Giving away product or content to the masses is largely viewed less as a public service or artistic virtue than an act of business naivety. After all, if you don’t profit from it (whatever “it” is), someone else sure will.

That’s where The Fat Jewish comes in. The moniker of Internet celebrity (ugh) Josh Ostrovsky isn’t ironic: He’s overweight, and – you guessed it – of Jewish descent, two traits that aren’t in themselves particularly funny. He sports a “vertical ponytail” and often parades around New York City in horrifyingly revealing spandex outfits, a la Borat.

But Ostrovsky’s transformation into an Internet Don isn’t due to his *totally wacky* physical persona. Nope. @TheFatJewish did it the new-fashioned way: Posting photos on Instagram. His account generally posts three to five photos per day, each of which garners well over 100,000 ‘likes.’ And they’re sometimes genuinely funny, if a bit reliant on stale memes, with a diverse mix of pop culture references, Tweets, and commentary on young adulthood. With nearly four million followers, The Fat Jewish is a certified World Wide Web One Percenter.

But there is a fundamental problem with the fact that Ostrovsky has used funny photos to propel himself to stardom: Literally none of the photos is his own. Perhaps he fancies himself a curator, but unlike the ones in museums, he doesn’t credit the artist. Ostrovsky’s way of making someone else’s photo his own is to slap a caption on it that is almost always far less funny than the photo itself.

Judging who does and doesn’t deserve to be rich and famous is a no-win proposition, but there’s something particularly gross about that fact that The Fat Jewish (along with many other “curators”) has turned other people’s comedy into a career of his own. Ask a sampling of Millennials who the funniest person on Instagram is, and you’re bound to hear “The Fat Jewish” at least a few times. (To be clear, The Fat Jewish doesn’t claim that the photos are his, but he certainlydoes not strain himself to correct those who assume that he, himself, is creating the page’s content).

Now Ostrovsky is cashing in big. Sprinkled in with his daily meme stream are semi-covert advertisements sponsored by companies ranging from Bud Light to a beef jerky company for which Ostrovsky himself has been tapped as a highly visible brand ambassador to the 18-35 market. Companies or individuals even pay Ostrovsky to have their Instagram handles tagged in one of his photos. @TheFatJewish on Instagram has been commercialized like any other website or TV station. Who is this guy?

The Fat Jewish, re-poster of Internet stuff.

He isn’t alone, of course. Folks like @F***Jerry, @Betches, and George Takei (Facebook) have all capitalized similarly. But Ostrovsky is by far the most visible public persona. And the fact is that each of these high-profile users are stealing from other, funnier people, with nary a mention of the original creators. It’s fair to say that, by creating and posting a photo of your own (on Instagram, Reddit – anywhere), you’re implicitly releasing it into the free and open Internet cosmos. But does that mean it can be monetized by anyone?

Intellectual property laws are fairly murky when it comes to online content like memes, but it appears that it’s entirely possible to trademark this content to prevent others from cashing in. I hope and expect that this will not become the norm for the day-to-day comedic content that we rely on for our “LOLs.” Preserving the Internet as a (fairly) open outlet for creativity therefore may require adherence to a certain etiquette, and a more transparent practice of crediting the author is a good place to start.

But if social media continues to trend toward commercialization of the lay user’s content, it may not be that simple. There are a lot of people who are good at being funny on the Internet, and pretty soon they may not want to do it for free.