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Harambe the Gorilla's Death

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Overview

Harambe the Gorilla was a 17-year-old Western lowland silverback gorilla who was shot and killed at the Cincinnati Zoo after a child fell into his enclosure in late May 2016. The incident was wildly criticized online by many who blamed the child’s parents for the gorilla’s untimely death.

Background

On May 28th, 2016, a 4-year-old boy crawled into the enclosure of the Western lowland gorilla Harambe at the Cincinnati Zoo. The gorilla then grasped the child and began dragging him about the enclosure before a Cincinnati Zoo employee fatally shot Harambe with a rifle.That day, YouTuber maxi uploaded footage of the incident to YouTube, where it gathered upwards of 12.6 million views and 41,000 comments in the next 48 hours (shown below).



Developments

Online Reaction

On May 29th, a post about the incident reached the front page of /r/news,[6] where it garnered more than 7,100 votes (87% upvoted) and 6,200 comments in the next two days. The same day, a petition titled “Justice for Harambe” was created on Change.org[2] which called for authorities to hold the child’s parents responsible for Harambe’s death. Within 48 hours, the petition gained over 338,000 signatures. Meanwhile, the hashtags #JusticeForHarambe and #RIPHarambe began circulating on both Facebook[4][5] and Twitter.[3]



News Media Coverage

On May 31st, the Mirror[1] published an article about the child’s parents Michelle Gregg and Deonne Dickerson. In the coming days, the story was covered by CNN,[7]BBC News,[8]NBC News,[9] Time[10] and The Daily Dot.[11]

AFL Athlete Racist Joke Controversy

On June 1st, 2016, a Facebook page titled AFL Memes[15] posted two image macros comparing the gorilla to Adam Goodes (shown below), a retired professional Australian rules football player of Indigenous ancestry who was controversially called an “ape” by a 13-year-old girl in 2013. Immediately after the images were posted, many viewers accused the page of promoting racist stereotypes of Indigenous Australians.



On June 2nd, the online backlash surrounding AFL Memes’ posts on Facebook were reported on by dozens of Australian news outlets and many other English-language news sites overseas, including BuzzFeed,[14] which misidentified another Facebook page with the same name as the party responsible for the controversy. Later that day, the Facebook page[12] that was incorrectly cited in the BuzzFeed article issued a statement clarifying that it had been misattributed as the source of the controversial posts, while condemning the racist memes aimed at Adam Goodes as “horrifying.” Furthermore, the group claimed that it would be seeking legal action against BuzzFeed for defamation (shown below, left). That same day, the AFL Memes page[13] responsible for publishing the original posts issued a public apology for offending viewers, along with a confirmation that the images in question have since been removed (shown below, right).



Memes

Weird Twitter quickly jumped on turning Harambe into a meme, photoshopping into image macros and ironically featuring him alongside photos of Prince, David Bowie, and Muhammad Ali in tributes to famous celebrities that died in 2016.[23]



Harambe Memorialized In Song

One popular Weird Twitter trend involved taking popular songs and changing their lyrics to be about Harambe. The trend was so popular it ended up getting its own “Twitter Moments” page.[24] In one popular tweet, Blink-182’s Mark Hoppus jumped in on the trend with his own song (shown below, right).



Dicks Out For Harambe

On July 2nd, 2016, Twitter user @sexualjumanji[19] posted a selfie photograph in which he is shown pointing a replica firearm at the camera along with the caption “We comin with them dicks out to avenge harambe!!!” (shown below, left). On July 4th, comedian Brandon Wardell tweeted[20] the phrase “dicks out for harambe” (shown below, right).



That day, Wardell posted a Vine of a group of men chanting “dicks out for Harambe” (shown below, left). On July 6th, Wardell uploaded a Vine of himself with actor Danny Trejo in which the pair say the phrase “dicks out for Harambe” (shown below, right). Within five days, the video gathered upwards of 2.2 million loops, 1,100 likes and 700 revines.



The following day, Twitter user @weebriel[21] tweeted to @sexualjumanji that he previously coined the phrase in a Twitch chat session (shown below).



On July 9th, the Trejo Vine was submitted to /r/NotTimeAndEric.[16] Meanwhile, Redditor lotsoftuna launched the /r/dicksoutforharambe[18] subreddit. The following day, the “Another Sad and Pathetic ironic meme page” Facebook page created a posting for an event titled “Dicks Out For Harambe,” encouraging people to visit the White House on July 16th and expose their genitals to “show solidarity and love for Harambe.”[17]

Street Name Prank

On July 10th, 2016, Ohio teen Max Brinton pranked Google into changing the street their high school is on, Shankland Road, into Harambe Drive. Less than two weeks later, Google updated their maps and Shankland Road was Harambe Drive.[25] Their story was popular enough to get picked up by Buzzfeed.[26]

Search Interest

External References


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