Internet Scumbags Won’t Stop Stealing From Me, And You

Dillon Cheverere10 years ago

I’m the most popular writer of headlines that no one has heard of. Did you guys know that about me? My article — the one about the guy who traveled down to Mexico to commit suicide, then spent the week there doing cocaine and booking hooker orgies before deciding that life wasn’t so bad after all, and ultimately chose to keep on living — went supernova viral TEN MONTHS ago. It was shared over half a million times on Facebook. That was a big story for us. And for me.

For whatever reason, the internet scum that is the parody Twitter account community decided to whore out my headline this week all across Twitter, to the millions of their collective followers using variations of this caption: “greatest headline ever.” Just retweeted and star-banged like a five-dollar whore-joke. That was my whore-joke, though. That headline came from my brain and typed with my fingertips. Shit was mine. Yet, I got zero credit from any of them.

There’s the original. All they had to do was crop the screenshot a half-inch lower and your boy’s name would have been in frame, giving me some credit. All those millions of idiots would at least know who wrote “the greatest headline ever.” But no. Nothing.

“Chill, man. What’s the big deal?” someone said to me on Twitter amidst my futile attempt to call them out to my relatively small following. Well, it’s a big deal because they’re using my material to get paid. And paid well.

Dear @MenisnistTweet, fuck you. Hey @MeninlstTweetz, your account is a copy of another thieving parody account. That’s so dumb. Also, fuck you. Hey @WORIDSTARWIPHOP, eat shit. Hey @WORLDSTARCOMEDY, why can’t you come up with your own shit? That’s so messed up. Hey @MensHumor, you just passed off my headline as your own content to your 3.4 million followers. Do you feel good about that? Fuck that, and fuck you. Hey @FillWerrell, I hate everything about your scummy existence. You’re thieving trash.

These accounts steal from me, they steal from you, they pass our material off as their own, and they make good money doing it by funneling cheap web traffic to bullshit clickbait sites for ad dollars, or they outright sell their accounts with enormous followings built off other people’s jokes. It’s a racket. It’s plagiarism. And it’s wrong.

The Fat Jew’s name is currently being dragged through the streets of the internet, bloodied and beaten down, for doing exactly this. His Instagram following is enormous. He makes a lot of money. He makes appearances for fees. He inked a show deal with Comedy Central… which he has now lost because everyone is slowly realizing that his entire shtick is stolen. Every joke he posts to his account that racks up likes and follows originally belonged to someone else — someone a lot funnier than him.

When stripped of other people’s material, he’s an unfunny fat guy with stupid hair. That’s the real him. That’s Josh Ostrovsky. The Fat Jew is a hack. A successful, thieving hack.

These people are the equivalent of a headlining standup comedian who gets all of his material from improv night at local, dingy bars, sitting in back with a pen and paper, writing down some struggling comic’s best jokes while trying to earn an honest dollar. They then pass the jokes off as their own to a sold-out arena for a fat paycheck. Except it’s worse, because the vast majority of these people don’t put their names or faces out there. They remain behind their computer screens, completely anonymous, stealing material and cashing checks. Scumbags.

The uplifting part of this mess is people are starting to notice. Twitter is, too. I mentioned The Fat Jew losing his Comedy Central show. That’s big. His name and stupid face are being dragged across hot e-coals. That’s even bigger.

A source in the tweet-for-cash business — albeit one who creates his own material — gave me a list of 40+ accounts that have been suspended by Twitter for stealing content. The bigger ones remain untouched, however (@MensHumor did lose their verified checkmark, though). But it’s a nice start.

The walls seem to be closing in on these accounts, which is great. But until they are all brought down or required to properly cite their jokes’ sources, I’m going to continue calling them out for what they are: thieving scumbags..