Do Social Media Ethics Even Exist?

As I type this, the internet is all abuzz about online Instagram personalities – @TheFatJewish and @FuckJerry specifically – who have risen to fame by creating hilarious profiles with the use of memes that were taken from another source.

I have two stances regarding this subject:

1. These online personalities are clearly stealing non-original content and claiming it as their own. It is unethical in every other media, so why are we accepting it on social media, more specifically Instagram?
2. Everyone re-posts memes they enjoy without crediting a source, and what makes @TheFatJewish and @FuckJerry unique from everyone else are their reaction captions to the actual images.

BUT… are his reaction captions even original? This suggests no:

FatJewish Steals Jokes Too

Surely there are many other online personalities guilty of the same wrongdoings as TheFatJewish, but he seems to be taking the majority of the brunt right now. Even celebrities feel the need to chime in:

Patton Oswalt Gives His Two Cents

Yes, I have personally re-posted images on my personally Instagram feed without crediting the original source. I have also given credit to the source I took the image from – but how do we know where the true original image is from? Some of these memes have been recycled over and over again.

p.s. I took the image for this blog from this article

More to come…