The Fat Jew Is Coming to Dallas for a Wine Party at the W | Dallas Observer
Navigation

The Fat Jew Is Not an Instagram Influencer — Those Guys Are Losers, He Says

The Fat Jew is not an Instagram influencer. You might think he is because of his 10 million followers on his account, @thefatjewish, and his occasional brand deals. But he's not, he promises. "I think it's a misconception that I am because I'm on Instagram and I have a lot...
See The Fat Jew in person Sunday.
See The Fat Jew in person Sunday. Courtesy Facebook
Share this:
The Fat Jew is not an Instagram influencer.

You might think he is because of his 10 million followers on his account, @thefatjewish, and his occasional brand deals.

But he's not, he promises.

"I think it's a misconception that I am because I'm on Instagram and I have a lot of followers, but influencers are like people who get paid to promote other people's products," he says. "Pretty much, almost all of the products and anything that I promote on my Instagram, anything that I'm talking about is pretty much all my own stuff. Influencers, they're like their own sort of breed of weirdos, but I have literally no part of that. They're all like kinda losers."

"Anything that I'm talking about is pretty much all my own stuff. Influencers, they're like their own sort of breed of weirdos, but I have literally no part of that. They're all like kinda losers." — Josh Ostrovsky, aka The Fat Jew

tweet this
On Sunday, Josh Ostrovsky, or The Fat Jew, will be at the W hotel in Dallas for the White Girl Rosé Pink Party, which he says will be "ridiculous and fun."

"I'm a real giver, to throw wine parties around the country where people could actually do some things they regret and make some real memories and then immediately forget them because they drank so much wine," he says.

If you're not a millennial, understanding The Fat Jew can be a little confusing. He says his parents for the longest time didn't know what to tell friends about their son's job.

"My dad had no idea what to call me for a while," Ostrovsky says. "He was telling his friends that I was an adult entertainer, and I was like, 'Don't say that.'"

Not an adult entertainer. Not an Instagram influencer. Not a comedian, he says — he's never been in a comedy club. A social media celebrity?

"I'm like a Magellan of stupidity," he says, "taking us into new worlds of unforeseen stupidity we never knew existed."

That will have to do. The Fat Jew swears he's not on his phone all hours of the day. He has bigger fish to fry — like being a male model for shoots in magazines he says "none of us will ever see."

But we will see him on Instagram. Followers include celebrities such as Selena Gomez and Stanley Tucci, whom Ostrovsky calls his American hero. "He's like my George Washington," he says.

The Fat Jew is only following 420 accounts on Instagram — it's not clear if that number is symbolic — and they are the usuals: Taylor Swift, Spencer Pratt, all of the Kardashians and Transportation Security Administration.

"They're like posting all of the stuff that people try to bring on planes that they're not allowed to, and the TSA documents it all on Instagram," he says. "Like you literally can't bring 215 ninja stars onto an airplane. You just can't."

In 2015, the internet accused Ostrovsky of stealing content from other social media users and comedians without proper attribution. However, he doesn't call it a scandal; he calls it a giant conversation at his expense.

"There were two sides to the issue," he says. "There was 16-year-old Korean blogger girls who are like, 'I'll repost anybody's photo at any time or anybody's anything,' and then there were 40-year-old writers who were like, 'Everything needs to be credited, people need to know exactly where things came from, you need to really dig deep for sources on everything, you need to really take the time to make sure people are getting [credit],' and it ended out that everyone was gonna start attributing everything at all times.

"Look at the internet. No one is doing that at any moment of the day at any time. So that has never happened, so I'm kind of sad because the whole thing put me through the wringer a little bit."

The hiccup doesn't seem to affect him too much. He's still posting memes, still drinking wine and still doing whatever The Fat Jew does.

Buy tickets to see The Fat Jew in person Sunday.
BEFORE YOU GO...
Can you help us continue to share our stories? Since the beginning, Dallas Observer has been defined as the free, independent voice of Dallas — and we'd like to keep it that way. Our members allow us to continue offering readers access to our incisive coverage of local news, food, and culture with no paywalls.