The Harambe meme

Harambe was a 17-year-old male Western lowland silverback gorilla that lived in the Cincinnati Zoo. When a 4-year-old boy fell into his enclosure, Harambe grasped the boy and dragged his around before the zoo's staffs fatally shot and killed the gorilla with a rifle fearing the child's safety. A YouTube user uploaded the video footage where it gathered more than 12 million views and 41 thousand comments in just 48 hours. The video was then removed, but several mirrored versions quickly replaced it. The petition against the incident came on Reddit's /r/news where it got more than 7,100 votes and 6,200 comments in the next two days. A petition titled "Justice for Harambe" was also created on Change.org 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. Moments later memes about Harambe started to bloom on the web. Many have photoshopped Harambe into image macros and ironically featuring him alongside photos of famous celebrities that died in 2016. Some even took the memes to popular songs by changing their lyrics to be about Harambe, doing some naming hoaxes, pranks and hacks. Tongue-in-cheek petitions about renaming the hometown Cincinnati Bengals, adding his face to Mount Rushmore or the Lincoln Memorial, and to put him on the dollar bill were also heard. On August 22nd, the Associated Press published an article titled "Harambe lives: Killed zoo gorilla gets a second life online," which included a statement: "We are not amused by the memes, petitions and signs about Harambe. Our zoo family is still healing, and the constant mention of Harambe makes moving forward more difficult for us. We are honoring Harambe by redoubling our gorilla conservation efforts and encouraging others to join us." Many internet users began seeing Harambe the gorilla as the internet celebrity of 2016.