UPDATE August 23:
Cincinnati Zoo deactivated its Facebook and Twitter accounts after people refused its demands to give up with the damn Harambe memes.
Frustrated posters have instead besieged its Instagram page, peppering unrelated photos of cute animals with comments like this:
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Harambe the gorilla has taken over the Internet and today, the meme persists despite pleas from the Cincinnati Zoo to respect Harambe’s memory by curtailing the Internet satire.
It’s become so popular to encourage your Twitter followers to “go dicks out” for the euthanized gorilla (among other tasteless suggestions), that even Vox felt the need to pen an 1,100-word “explainer” tackling the plight of the Internet’s favorite primate. Harambe’s endless appearances are even the subject of scholarly study.
Over the weekend, the Cincinnati Zoo called on the Internet to stop posting Harambe memes, after zoo director Thane Maynard’s Twitter was hacked by a Harambe supporter. His account Tweeted, ‘I was planning this for a while, so sorry it took so long brother! Have a good time in Heaven. #Harambe” and “Harambe 1, Cincinnati Zoo 0.” The zoo decided that was the last straw.
Harambe who was 17 years old at the time of his death, has lived on in social media, starting with a “Justice for Harambe” petition that appeared days after his death, and metastasizing into an Internet satire phenomenon. He’s even getting 2% or more in some Presidential polls. There’s a We the People White House signature page asking the Treasury Department to put Harambe’s visage on the $50 bill. Sixty-thousand people want him to be an available Pokemon in Pokemon Go.
He even earned a mention in No Man’s Sky.
"Grandpa, what was 2016 like?"
*sirens blare, the phrase 'dicks out for Harambe' flashes over and over in my mind*
Me: I don't remember— Bradley (@traitorbaby) August 15, 2016
The meme isn’t really about the ape’s death—he’s simply settled into meme ubiquity, like hundreds of other Internet-based characters (Pepe the Frog, for example). But the meme is having real-life consequences. Cincinnati Zoo has had a difficult time policing its social media, which features thousands of replies referencing Harambe daily, and the grind was starting to take an emotional toll.
According to Maynard (whose Twitter was the one hacked), it’s interfering with the zoo’s ability to process Harambe’s loss. “We are not amused by the memes, petitions and signs about Harambe,” Maynard wrote to the Associated Press on Sunday. “Our zoo family is still healing, and the constant mention of Harambe makes moving forward more difficult for us.
“At first, the petitioners had good intentions,” Maynard wrote. “But then the goofuses of the Internet hopped on the Harambe train for their jollies, and it has gotten out of control.”
Asking the Internet nicely to please refrain from doing something is, unfortunately, an almost useless endeavor. Cincinnati Zoo’s tearful request just reinvigorated Harambe’s Reddit popularity.
Well the Harambe meme was pretty dead but the Cincinnati Zoo just asked people to stop mememing so pic.twitter.com/4WPMbQlYEw
— Trash Ketchup (@jocoly) August 22, 2016
Let's just ask the internet nicely. That's worked before. https://t.co/PrrI3dYhA4
— risik (@_risik) August 22, 2016
The Cincinnati Zoo may be done mourning, but the Internet is not.