Elliot Tebele / Fuck Jerry

About

Fuck Jerry is the online handle of American marketer and memer Elliot Tebele, who is best known for curating humorous content on his various social media feeds, most notably on Instagram. Like fellow internet comedian Josh Ostrovsky (a.k.a. “The Fat Jew”), Tebele has been widely criticized for appropriating online content from various sources without attribution.

History

In April 2011, Tebele launched the FuckJerry Instagram^[1] account, gathering over 9.3 million followers of the next six years. The same month, he created the FuckJerry Tumblr^[7] blog. Also in April 2011, Tebele launched the FuckJerry.com^[12] website, featuring various FuckJerry branded merchandise for sale. In July, the @FuckJerry^[3] Twitter feed was launched, receiving more than 86,000 followers in the next five years. On August 19th, 2014, the official FuckJerry Facebook^[2] page was created, which received upwards of 911,000 likes in two years. That summer, Tebele put up his first sponsored post on Instagram for the fast food restaurant Burger King, featuring a $3,000 promotional ad for chicken fries.^[8] On January 13th, 2016, Tebele launched the website FuckJerrysJuice^[11] to "raise the standards of ice cream flavored juice."

Highlights

Solo Jazz Pattern

In January 2014, Tebele updated his Instagram profile picture with an image of Solo Cup Company's Jazz graphic pattern. Throughout the year, Tebele continued to adopt the pattern as his own personal brand by incorporating it into the design of his social media accounts^[13] and various merchandises sold on his website^[14], including TIMELESS (Jerry's Tee), a Solo Jazz patterned t-shirt described as "the most coveted and quintessential piece from Jerry's everyday uniform" with "the signature FJ wave." Since then, Tebele has been credited^[15] as a major amplifier to resurgence in the popularity of the iconic merchandise design in 2015.

What Do You Meme? Kickstarter

On June 14th, 2016, Tebele launched a Kickstarter^[4] campaign for card game titled "What Do You Meme?", featuring cards printed with various images taken from Tebele's Instagram feed (shown below). Within 24 hours, the page gathered upwards of $31,600 of its $10,000 goal.

Reception

On June 8th, 2015, the women's interest blog Cosmopolitan^[5][6] published an interview with Tebele along with a listicle highlighting the "10 Best Fuckjerry Posts of All Time."On August 3rd, the A.V. Club^[10] published an article criticizing Tebele and Ostrovsky for "stealing comedians' jokes." On October 1st, Redditor MikeyMadness submitted a post titled "Fuck Jerry. Stop stealing from /r/blackpeopletwitter", featuring a screenshot of a joke slightly altered by FuckJerry (shown below). Within eight months, the post gathered upwards of 5,800 votes (93% upvoted) and 400 comments on /r/blackpeopletwitter.^[9]

#FuckFuckJerry

On January 15th, 2019, Vulture editor Megh Writer tweeted^[16] a screenshot of a sponsored tweet from the @FuckJerry Instagram account, adding "when your stolen tweets bring you so much success that they turn into a sponsored post template." Over the next few weeks, she continued to post more @FuckJerry posts sponsored by the comedy television network Comedy Central (shown below).

The following week, Vulture^[17] published the article "Comedy Central Is Advertising With Every Comedian’s Worst Enemy." The artile states:

Tebele’s long-running joke theft has been called out and covered extensively by comedians and writers over the years, so more recently, the accounts have included attribution, presumably to ward off further criticism […] It feels particularly egregious to see the latest series of ads FuckJerry has been posting this month … promoting Comedy Central shows. Broad City, Corporate, and The Other Two have all gotten their own FuckJerry Instagram ads over the past two weeks, and to twist the knife for comedians everywhere, they’re all formatted like the stolen jokes Tebele used to post regularly.

There’s just something about advertising on an Instagram account that got successful for posting stolen jokes -- and spending ad money to run sponsored posts stylized like stolen jokes, no less -- that feels antithetical to everything Comedy Central stands for, especially considering that the network likely employs comedians and writers who have had their jokes stolen by FuckJerry at some point.

Over the next week, as news of FuckJerry's relationship to the infamous Fyre Festival grew in the public eye, people began using the #FuckFuckJerry hashtag to mock the company. Comedians, however, appeared to be using it as a means of criticizing the company's past behavior and current acceptance by Comedy Central (examples below).

"We Drank at Your Place" Lawsuit

On March 19th, 2019, a social media company based out of Nigeria sued FJERRY, LLC and founder Elliot Tebele for copyright infringement. The company alleges that FuckJerry used an image of a text message conversation about drinking in an advertisement for JAJA tequila, which Tebele owns (shown below).^[18]

In response to the lawsuit, a spokesperson for Jerry Media said, "This is a frivolous lawsuit and we intend to defend it vigorously."

Search Interest

External References