Stealing is wrong, plain and simple. What Josh Ostrovsky, aka "The Fat Jew," did was wrong.
As journalists -- and mind you I am no perfect journalist -- our general edict is that when someone has written something and you quote from it, citing the original author is often enough to make what you’ve done acceptable.
For a long while, Ostrovsky took other people's jokes or commentary and shared them across the web without attribution. He fessed up and apologized.
"I'm not necessarily a comedian, I'm a curator," Ostrovsky told me.
We sat down for a long interview a few weeks ago for a conversation that was part of a new video series called "Drinking With Dan." It was intended to be mostly just a fun interlude for us both. I asked him directly about the accusations people were hurling at both his work and the work of Elliot Tebele and Elie Ballas, the duo behind the popular Instagram account @fuckjerry.
Though I had heard murmurs of his theft, this taping was before the avalanche of criticism. Ostrovsky was still in a self-reflective yet mildly protective mode. Part of this conversation is in the video above.
When I pressed him about the accusations against him, he basically took the position that he meant no harm and wasn’t absolutely convinced that he had done any real damage, noting that he has an "army of interns" who work to find the citation for his content. (I asked him if all that was a blizzard of bullshit.)
So, where does that leave us now? A lot of people hate him for what he did. Others wouldn't use such a strong verb, but they nonetheless have damned him from pillar to post. He has been beaten like a rented mule.
Over the course of our nearly hour-long discussion, Ostrovsky struck me as fundamentally a good guy. He is smart. He is genuine. I don’t believe he intentionally set out to hurt anyone, though I recognize that’s no excuse.
But under these circumstances, it’s worth reminding ourselves about the value of really listening to someone's apology, trusting in earnestness (in general) and actually forgiving.
In this high-speed online world, lines start out blurred. Standards are murky. For someone like Ostrovsky, whose fame is rooted in the Internet, it is all too easy to lose your way (or simply make up your own).
Is this ethical? Is this moral? Is this the right and fair thing to do? These questions may get asked, but perhaps their answers don’t come before the next idea goes viral. The fact of the matter is that we now operate in a space that would rather beg for forgiveness than ask for permission.