The release of two documentaries this month about the beautiful disaster that was Fyre Fest didn't just put a spotlight back on millennial grifter Billy McFarland and his partner-in-fistbumps Ja Rule (who, lest we forget, was "hustled, scammed, bamboozled, hood winked, lead astray!!!")—it also put a big spotlight on FuckJerry/Jerry Media, the advertising/social media agency that was instrumental in promoting Fyre Fest (even though they allegedly knew in advance it was turning into disaster).

In the wake of being prominently featured in both docs—FuckJerry founder Elliot Tebele was particularly criticized for his involvement as an executive producer in the Netflix doc—there has been a renewed interest in another revenue arm of Jerry Media: stealing comedy content from people on the Internet and reposting it on their branded accounts.

And that's why you maybe have seen famous comedians and celebs such as Patton Oswalt, John Mulaney, Colin Hanks, Paul F. Tompkins, Julie Klausner, Mike Birbiglia, Tim Heidecker and more tweeting #FuckFuckJerry in recent weeks.

Great work everyone! Keep it going! Let’s carve these thieving douche-bros out of existence! (Thank you IG: weeblocomedy for the graphic) #FuckFuckJerry pic.twitter.com/3rcpOsVRW6 — Patton Oswalt (@pattonoswalt) February 4, 2019

Hi gang! If you’re still following “Fuck Jerry,” welcome to 2019. Ditch the zero! #FuckFuckJerry — Julie Klausner (@julieklausner) February 3, 2019

Yeah, this company is a creative parasite. They should go into banking or some other bullshit. They deserve no follows and many unfollows. #FuckFuckJerry https://t.co/JRJ3feSXlK — Mike Birbiglia (@birbigs) February 3, 2019

#FuckFuckJerry and fuck all the talentless assholes who take the work of other artists and post it as their own. https://t.co/rxAp39phED — Anthony Atamanuik (@TonyAtamanuik) February 1, 2019

The hashtag was suggested by none other than 30 Rock actor Judah Friedlander, but the concept and "movement" was started by Vulture comedy editor Megh Wright. Wright had previously written about joke thievery in a 2015 Splitsider piece on plagiarist Josh Ostrovsky (a.k.a. The Fat Jew), so it was a topic she was quite familiar with when she noticed that the Fuck Jerry Instagram account was promoting Comedy Central shows including Broad City, Corporate, and The Other Two. So she wrote an article for Vulture calling them out for it.

"Since I was looking at the FuckJerry Instagram anyway, I noticed that they recently used tweets by both comedians and regular people to promote their own products (tequila brand, card game)," Wright told Gothamist. "So I asked those people if they'd been paid, and they hadn't, and a lot of people were paying attention to my tweets about it. Since FuckJerry charges brands for ads based on their number of followers, I wondered what might happen if comedians whose work has been stolen over the years were to encourage their fans to unfollow the account."

hey @marklutchman were you paid for your tweet that was used by FuckJerry to advertise their $30 card game? just curious! pic.twitter.com/9SbcwaydWN — Megh Wright (@megh_wright) January 28, 2019

Founded in 2011, FuckJerry's Instagram account (which still has Tebele's name in its profile) has amassed over 14 million followers by taking screenshots of other people's social media jokes/content and reposting it with the attribution conveniently cut off. FuckJerry grew into a larger company called Jerry Media (which owns other aggregation accounts like Beige Cardigan, Instagram news account Jerry News, games like What Do You Meme, and even a tequila called JAJA), but FuckJerry remains its crown jewel—it was charging $30,000 for each sponsored post on its grid back in 2016, according to Adweek, and it's apparently doubled that fee since.

After being called out by comedians over the years, they started including attribution in their screenshots—but they also raised the stakes by using their content to sell advertisements and run ad campaigns for major brands. They don't tag the people whose work they're using, but they do tag those tequila accounts and companies who are paying them for eyeball real estate on their page.

"FuckJerry (and The Fat Jew) are not a new topic in the comedy community—it just always felt like taking some kind of meaningful action against them would be a hopeless cause," Wright explained. "They amassed millions of followers by posting other people's content for years, often without attribution, but that isn't even the part I'm most concerned about. It's profiting off that content, not compensating or crediting people when they use them for ads, and having a history of being rude, dismissive, disrespectful, and/or totally unresponsive to those who reach out for credit that I find the most troubling."

"I thought comedians would always get behind something like this, it just had to be created for them."

This is me being too optimistic, but FuckJerry's value is their 14.3m IG followers. If some celebs with tons of IG followers posted a message urging their fans to unfollow and inspired a boycott, maybe a dent could be made in that 14.3m. It's a start? https://t.co/KbgoWH7CZf — Megh Wright (@megh_wright) January 25, 2019

#fuckfuckjerry could be the hashtag. — Judah Friedlander (@JudahWorldChamp) January 28, 2019

One of those comedians who has seen their material ripped off by FuckJerry is Vic Berger IV, a satirist who has become famous for his hilarious, surreal video edits. "I've been reached out to with all kinds of stories about people attempting to get credit/etc from FuckJerry, and I think Vic Berger's tweet/IG post about it says everything you need to know in terms of how they treat people who reach out to them," Wright said.

Appropriately, Berger made a video edit just for FuckJerry:

In 2016, #FuckJerry and their chief content officer James Ryan Ohliger aka “Krispyshorts” stole a bunch of my videos and posted as their own with ads attached. Here was Ohliger’s response after I called them out on @instagram. #FuckFuckJerry pic.twitter.com/aUqzNtluMV — Vic Berger IV (@VicBergerIV) January 30, 2019

Wright said she was encouraged to see how responsive people have been once the conversation started. The Fuck Jerry account has lost approximately 200K in the 10 days since the social media campaign began.

"It seems like a lot of followers weren't aware of how they have treated people over the years, how they use ads, and how comedians feel about them in general, and when you hear directly from a lot of comedians about it at once vs just one or two, it's more effective," she said. "Taking other people's content without permission or payment to build a huge following and then using said following to get big ad deals from brands like Bumble and Burger King just feels like an unethical business practice to me and something that shouldn't be supported."

Here’s a bit Fat Jew stole from me years ago. When I confronted him by email, he didn’t respond, but pulled the joke. When you follow IG accounts like him or fuckjerry, you’re supporting joke thieves who are morally bankrupt. Unfollow them, and watch me on Conan tomorrow night. pic.twitter.com/MXHD2g4exI — Sam Morril (@sammorril) February 4, 2019

Colin Hanks also issued fiery statement on Instagram:

Tim & Eric star Tim Heidecker even wrote one of his classic protest songs in honor of the hashtag:

hey @megh_wright figured you could use a jingle for your movement #fuckfuckjerry https://t.co/wbuO5M8Inp — Just Tim Heidecker (@timheidecker) February 2, 2019

As a result of all this, Comedy Central removed all of its ads from the FuckJerry account, and said that it wouldn't be working with the company in the future.

Jerry Media did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the backlash. But over the weekend Tebele posted a statement on Medium promising to change their entire business plan: "Effective immediately, we will no longer post content when we cannot identify the creator, and will require the original creator’s advanced consent before publishing their content to our followers. It is clear that attribution is no longer sufficient, so permission will become the new policy." Patton Oswalt was not thrilled with this statement:

Such ABSOLUTE FUCKING BULLSHIT from @FuckJerry. No “established norms for re-posting”? LIE. Flat-out fucking lie. They did EXTRA work removing creator’s names from Tweets to steal credit. They knew what they were doing. They got caught and they’re gaslighting. #FuckFuckJerry pic.twitter.com/GEWaZ1gnMu — Patton Oswalt (@pattonoswalt) February 4, 2019

There has also been a small backlash to the hashtag: Jordan Bassett at the NME (yes, the British music mag) argued that by posting to platforms like Instagram and Twitter, comedians are already giving away their jokes (and value). "The fact is that FuckJerry didn’t ‘steal’ your joke. You gave it away - just like I gave away that random shit from the front of my house. You posted it on Twitter or Instagram for free, and then someone else picked it up and did their own thing with it," he wrote. "You could have re-shared other people’s posts on a massive scale, but you didn’t and FuckJerry did. And that’s why they’re rich and you’re not (sorry)."

Others, like Taylor Lorenz, who writes about Internet culture for The Atlantic, seem to take a slightly more sympathetic view of the vast complexities of social media sharing culture. She wrote on Twitter, "I mean they’ve been crediting people frequently for a while now. To get consent before posting is sort of insane and they’re really bending over backwards. No other meme page (Pubity, etc) or media page (BuzzFeed, Scary Mommy, etc) does that, yet no one is freaking out abt them🙃"

That said I really, really do hope this establishes a new norm! I just think on the current internet it will be a lot of work and norms will have to change, or maybe they can just put memes on the blockchain or whatever — Taylor Lorenz (@TaylorLorenz) February 3, 2019

Wright has also gotten a few obvious troll accounts commenting on her Instagram now as well:

a new one! “jealous girl with major psychological issues” pic.twitter.com/eUdIOQA6N7 — Megh Wright (@megh_wright) February 4, 2019

Wright said she thought these weren't so much counter-arguments as people pointing fingers in different directions.

"Ultimately the goal was to get people talking about this, and here we are, talking about it, so that's good, even if someone is taking issue with it or disagreeing or trying to minimize it—that's how we start to work our way towards figuring out solutions for the future, right?" she said. "If some people think FuckJerry is free to profit off other people's content and even use it as ads for their own products without paying them for it, then we're also free to unfollow the account. There's clearly value in memes and tweets and other content people put on the internet if these things are being used as ads and used to build a following to base sponsored post prices on, so I don't think it's all that radical to suggest that the creators of that content should be paid and treated fairly."

An email I got from someone who had his art stolen by beigecardigan, who ignored his requests for credit, during a difficult moment in his life: "Considering everything that was going on, it would have meant the world to me at the time to receive some recognition." #FuckFuckJerry pic.twitter.com/FXvDccvRm0 — Megh Wright (@megh_wright) February 3, 2019

as a person that fuckjerry fucked by posting my tweet and making money off it I fully support #fuckfuckjerry please unfollow them if you enjoy original content created by the people that created it pic.twitter.com/3Rjb01zgDB — Matt O'Brien (@matt_obrien) February 2, 2019

While Tebele has made his Twitter account private since the hashtag took off, the company has continued doing what it does: Lorenz reported just last week that Jerry Media was trying to broker a deal between an anti-Trump nonprofit Need To Impeach and the World Record Instagram Egg: "In a slide deck, Jerry Media proposed that the egg crack to reveal the words Impeach Trump as Trump popped out and did the chicken dance. The agency even created a short animated video demonstrating the stunt. Need to Impeach ultimately passed on the opportunity."