The Fat Jew Dishes on Money Pizza Respect

Spend just a few minutes chatting with Josh Ostrovsky, AKA Instagram star @TheFatJewish, and you’re guaranteed to crack up. Whether the 33-year-old is talking about his Uncle Murray (“the guy once tried to sell me an entire set of Le Creuset bakeware from his trunk—on Rosh Hashanah!”) or being a 9-year-old diva during a photo shoot for a Hershey’s commercial he appeared in, he’s a natural born storyteller.

Or maybe it’s just that he has excelled at seeing—and sharing—life’s absurdities. He mines lots of life’s raunchy bits (Tip: Don’t leave his book on your coffee table if you have youngsters in your household.) in his new book, Money Pizza Respect. It hits bookstores November 3 and is a tip-of-the-hat of the three things he says he cares most about. And bonus: He already has a triangular-shaped tattoo with those three words emblazoned on his skin.

The book is Ostrovsky’s attempt to make a bigger statement, too.

“I wanted to do a book because we’re going to go through some social media burnout,” he says of Money Pizza Respect, which includes everything from recipes and essays to photos with his toothless rescue dog, Instagram star Toast (@toastmeetsworld). “It’s too much. There are too many photos of people’s babies, their lunches and the sun setting. I think real life is going to be hot again.”

That may seem a touch ironic for someone who made his career on the Internet—though he’s also a wine entrepreneur (his label is called White Girl Rose) and a plus-size model—and has more Instagram followers—6.5 million and counting—than President Obama (5.1 million) and Oprah (4.3 million).

“The polar ice cap is melting, ISIS hates us and I have more followers than President Obama,” he says. “The world is ending!”

But having millions of social media followers isn’t everything though it has been fun for Ostrovsky, who admits that it has its perks.

“When I do events, I’ll be like ‘I need a football helmet filled with guacamole and a framed signed photo of Condoleeza Rice,’” he says. “It’s amazing—the staff usually comes through.”

Still, social media Luddites are about to be considered ‘hot,’ Ostrovsky says.

“If you waited this long and never got on social media, you’re about to get hip,” he says. “And that’s why I wrote my book. People are reading again and reading can be 100 percent cool.”

To keep things old school, the game plan is to throw ‘80s- and ‘90s-era raves to celebrate the book instead of doing online live-streaming events.

“I think I’m a good guy to bridge the generations,” he says. “I’m of the Internet—I’m a 16-year-old Korean blogger at heart—but I’m also old enough to remember what life was like before. I’m the crossroads of IRL and URL.”

And, despite the saturation of social media, Ostrovsky does feel that the medium can help parents relate better to their kids.

“It’s easier than ever to connect with your kids as long as you don’t put your baseball cap on sideways and say ‘yoloswag,’” he says. Your kids will be like ‘please stop.’”

In fact, Ostrovsky sometimes wishes he could have connected with his parents via Instagram or Facebook when he was a teenager.

“My mom still doesn’t realize that when she writes a comment on Facebook it isn’t private,” he says. “If I write ‘woke up in a dumpster,’ she writes something like ‘what happened? Come over and I’ll make you some food.’ It’s classic! I think it would have made me laugh if we had Facebook when I was younger and she wrote something like that.”

In the end, his M.O. is strictly to make you laugh.

“I like the feeling that if your day is lousy, you’re at the DMV and someone is eating ziti they brought from home and it’s only 10 a.m., you can go on your phone and I can pull you out of that for a minute,” he says. “I like that I’m always with you to make you feel better, especially at life’s unbearable moments.”

As for the highest compliment he could receive upon a reader completing his book?

“One would be ‘I peed a little,’” he says. “Not peed your pants but a little dribble. Second, ‘that guy isn’t as stupid as I thought. I thought you were brain dead but you can kind of write so Mazel!’”