By Dustin Rowles | Social Media | August 24, 2016 |
By Dustin Rowles | Social Media | August 24, 2016 |
For those of you blissfully unaware of the obnoxious Harambe meme that’s taken over certain corners of social media in the last three months, allow me to fill you in. In May, a 4-year-old boy crawled into the enclosure of the gorilla Harambe at the Cincinnati Zoo. The gorilla grasped the child and began dragging him around. A Cincinnati Zoo employee fatally shot Harambe with a rifle. The Internet went crazy. You know this already.
In the days after the death of Harambe, the outrage over the gorilla’s death intensified to a ridiculous degree. At some point, the exaggerated grief over the death of the gorilla took on a life of its own. It became a joke. It became something of a social-media competition to see who could express the most grief. People began to compare the death of Harambe to celebrity icons.
Rip to the 2016 legends pic.twitter.com/aNosD7GNst
— Ethan (@_Ben_DoverX) August 24, 2016
#2016belike #davidbowie #merlehaggard #alanrickman #prince #Harambe #MuhammadAli #rip #celebrities #gorillas pic.twitter.com/DkGkbPE43U
— Clint House (@DocHouseJax) June 4, 2016
Among the many memes that have splintered from the death of Harambe was the “Dicks out for Harambe” meme. Danny Trejo got involved. It went viral.
It’s now been three months since the death of Harambe, but social media still hasn’t let it go. The Harambe meme refuses to die.
Bartender: What will you be having to drink?
— daniel (@DFkinLopes_) August 24, 2016
Harambe: I'll have a beer
Me: No, he'll have just ice.
B: Just ice?
M: Yes, justice for Harambe
i wish it was me instead of harambe
— insane (@deIuge) August 24, 2016
In fact, it may be worse now than ever.
Harambe is 10x funnier now that everyone keeps saying the meme is over
— the good posts guy (@Lowenaffchen) August 24, 2016
It got so bad that the Cincinnati Zoo had to deactivate its Twitter account, pleading with social media to stop making memes, which of course is the sort of thing that’s only going to make it worse, because the bro-y, Reddit contingent of social media gets off on the fact that there’s an element of cruelty to their joke.
To me, the meme is not particularly funny not because of the meme itself (although, that too), but because of the general type of person who employs the meme. You know who I’m talking about. Mostly (but not entirely) dicks, and the kind of people that frequently use the term “false equivalency.” Ugh.
Yesterday, Silicon Valley’s Kumail Nanjiani had a “hot take” on the Harambe meme.
Harambe became a big meme thing because it's a "funny African name" that people can make fun of without feeling racist. Come at me.
— Kumail Nanjiani (@kumailn) August 23, 2016
Re: my previous tweet: Dicks out for a HOT TAKE!!!
— Kumail Nanjiani (@kumailn) August 23, 2016
I have the rare hot take that pisses off both liberals and conservatives. This is how I know I'm right. People so mad to look in the mirror!
— Kumail Nanjiani (@kumailn) August 23, 2016
The angrier you get, the more convinced I am about my theory. So go ahead. Prove me right.
— Kumail Nanjiani (@kumailn) August 23, 2016
And yes I am trying to end the Harambe meme. Enough is enough. Let's move on. It's time.
— Kumail Nanjiani (@kumailn) August 23, 2016
For all I know, Nanjiani was only half joking about their being a racist subtext to the Harambe meme, but to another subsection of the Internet, Harambe is associated with the sickening, racist-as-hell insults that bigoted jackasses Tweeted at Leslie Jones, temporarily forcing her off of Twitter, so there’s definitely a half-serious element to the tweet, as well. Indeed, I thought the Jones incident would kill the Harambe meme once and for all, because whether it was originally racist or not, it was, at the very least, being employed by racists.
Meanwhile, in a very civil disagreement, Max Landis disagrees with Nanjiani in the only way he knows how: By being obnoxious.
@kumailn Hard disagree. It's funny name + handsome picture of gorilla + incident people over reacted to emotionally = meme
— Max Landis (@Uptomyknees) August 23, 2016
@MattBarnette @kumailn Yeah the name's funny but not from a racial standpoint. PEACE FOR HARAMBE
— Max Landis (@Uptomyknees) August 23, 2016
@Uptomyknees @MattBarnette it's a "funny" name that you wouldn't have been able to mock if it was attached to a human being. Fully true.
— Kumail Nanjiani (@kumailn) August 23, 2016
@kumailn @MattBarnette yeah but that's a huge false equivalency. It's a gorilla that attacked a kid. imo you're reaching.
— Max Landis (@Uptomyknees) August 23, 2016
@Uptomyknees "you're reaching" is not an argument. I am saying ppl think it's a funny name. That's part of why it's a meme.
— Kumail Nanjiani (@kumailn) August 23, 2016
@Uptomyknees if a person is named Harambe, you can't mock it cuz you may seem racist. But for a gorilla, great.
— Kumail Nanjiani (@kumailn) August 23, 2016
@kumailn Okay, but if the Gorilla's name was Watson or Quincy or Olaf or Oswald or Yoric or Ronald it would be basically the same
— Max Landis (@Uptomyknees) August 23, 2016
@Uptomyknees We can make fun of the name Olaf. We can mock Quincy. We can't mock an African name. Except in this case. Cecil didn't meme.
— Kumail Nanjiani (@kumailn) August 23, 2016
@kumailn Cecil meme'd af what sanctified corner of the internet are you living in i was seeing RIP Cecil 9/11 Never Forget type stuff
— Max Landis (@Uptomyknees) August 23, 2016
@Uptomyknees I truly only saw outrage. No huge memes like this. Ok I have to go now. Let's agree I'm right.
— Kumail Nanjiani (@kumailn) August 23, 2016
This is one of those arguments, to me, where you look at the people participating in the debate, you ignore the merits and you choose a side based on who is making the argument. Max Landis is an obnoxious white dude with a history of flaunting his white privilege insisting to a person of color that a meme is not about race, and Kumail Nanjiani is a smart, funny, sensitive guy with an amazing marriage and no such history of sketchy remarks.
Yeah, I’m going default to Kumail Nanjiani on this one, not just because Nanjiani is the superior person, but because that Harambe meme never really sat right with me, either.