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'The Fat Jew' Cancels Santa Monica Book Signing Over Threats From A 'Hater'
Josh "The Fat Jew" Ostrovsky (Photo by Bennett Raglin/Getty Images for DuJour)
The controversial Internet celebrity and plagiarist known as "The Fat Jew" says his book signing in Santa Monica was canceled because of threats from a "crazy stalker/fan/hater."On Monday, The Fat Jew, whose real name is Josh Ostrovsky, announced on his official Facebook page that he canceled his book signing scheduled for later that night at the Santa Monica Barnes & Noble. "Despite literally my Mom, 13 close friends and 200+ fans who RSVP'd, one faceless person kinda ruined it for everyone," he wrote. "I've been contacted a few times by this dude, threatening me in various ways and it's really hard to gauge his level of seriousness."
Last week, Ostrovsky released his first book Money Pizza Respect, a collection of images and humorous essays. Despite being a published author and being represented by CAA, Ostrovsky has garnered criticism for essentially becoming Internet-famous by stealing other people's jokes. On The Today Show, he defended himself by saying, "The Internet is like a giant Jacuzzi, you know what I mean. There's all kinds of germs, like, we're sharing everything."
And while the "crazy stalker/fan/hater" hasn't been identified, Death and Taxes say one person that was definitely going to show up was comedian and writer Rob Fee:
Hi we are gonna go ruin this today. If you want to come along and help, message me and I'll give you the details.
Posted by Rob Fee on Monday, November 9, 2015
Fee's threat was to expose Ostrovsky's plagiarism at the signing:
"We were just going to print out jokes he had stolen," Fee explained to Death and Taxes. "We were going to put the originals next to them and put copies of it in all his books, hand them out, then get in line to have him sign the pictures of his stolen jokes... I thought he would be flattered that we were such dedicated fans."
Last week, the Twitter account @updog7 (whose bio reads: "hey there, i wrote a book") posted scans of Ostrovsky's book. Since then, most of the images have been taken down due to copyright claims.
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