# Harambe

> Harambe is a 2016 memorial meme about a 17-year-old gorilla shot at Cincinnati Zoo, spawning ironic tributes and the internet rallying cry "Dicks Out for Harambe.

Harambe was a 17-year-old western lowland gorilla shot and killed at the Cincinnati Zoo on May 28, 2016, after a three-year-old boy fell into his enclosure. The incident spawned one of the defining memes of 2016, mixing ironic tributes, mock-serious mourning, and the viral rallying cry "Dicks Out for Harambe" into a sprawling internet event that outlasted every thinkpiece written about it.

## Origin
On May 28, 2016, a three-year-old boy climbed under a 3-foot fence, crawled through 4 feet of bushes, and fell 15 feet into the Gorilla World enclosure at the Cincinnati Zoo[5]. Harambe, a 440-pound silverback, approached the child in the moat. Over the next 10 minutes, bystander footage showed Harambe dragging the boy through shallow water, at times propping him up and at other times pulling him down[2]. Onlookers' screaming made the gorilla increasingly agitated[1].

Witness Kimberley Ann Perkins O'Connor told CNN that Harambe initially seemed to be helping the child, but the crowd's noise pushed his behavior toward rough handling[1]. Zoo director Thane Maynard described the situation as dangerous, saying the child's head was "banging on concrete" and that a tranquilizer dart could take five to ten minutes to work, during which Harambe might have become even more aggressive[13]. Zoo officials shot Harambe with a single rifle round. The boy was treated at Cincinnati Children's Hospital for non-life-threatening injuries[5].

A bystander uploaded footage to YouTube, where it pulled in over 12.6 million views within 48 hours[4]. By May 29, a post about the incident hit the front page of Reddit's r/news with more than 7,100 upvotes and 6,200 comments[4]. That same day, a Change.org petition titled "Justice for Harambe" appeared, collecting over 338,000 signatures in two days[2]. The hashtags #JusticeForHarambe and #RIPHarambe spread rapidly across Twitter and Facebook[14].

- **Platform:** Internet communities/news
- **Creator:** Community-created from news event; Brandon Wardell (comedian, popularized "Dicks Out for Harambe"), @sexualjumanji (early "Dicks Out" originator)
- **Date:** 2016-05-28

## Overview
Harambe memes don't follow a single format. They show up as photoshopped images placing the gorilla among dead celebrities, parody song lyrics rewritten in his honor, mock petitions for absurd causes, and the endlessly repeated slogan "Dicks Out for Harambe." What ties them together is a tone of mock-sincere mourning that treats a zoo gorilla like a fallen hero, martyred saint, or beloved personal friend.

The most recognizable Harambe content features him with angel wings and a halo, standing alongside Prince, David Bowie, and Muhammad Ali in "RIP Legends" collages[6]. Other common formats include Harambe superimposed onto Mount Rushmore, inserted into political imagery, or referenced as part of a conspiracy theory about splitting the timeline. The meme is loose enough to absorb almost any subject. During its 2016 peak, simply dropping the word "Harambe" into an unrelated conversation was enough to create a surreal moment[11].

What made the Harambe meme unusual was the absence of a clear villain. Unlike Cecil the lion, killed by a wealthy dentist who made an easy target for outrage, the Harambe story had no satisfying resolution[11]. The zoo acted reasonably. The parents weren't monsters. The gorilla was just dead. That lack of narrative closure made Harambe sticky: people couldn't move on because there was nothing to resolve, so they kept posting.

## How It Spread
The first wave was outrage. Vigils were held in Cincinnati, where animal rights activist Anthony Seta spoke at the zoo[13]. PETA condemned the zoo's barriers and called for people to boycott facilities displaying captive animals[2]. The boy's mother, Michelle Gregg, was attacked on social media so severely she deleted her Facebook account[14]. Celebrities including Ricky Gervais and Piers Morgan weighed in publicly[5]. Police investigated the parents for possible neglect, but Ohio prosecutor Joe Deters cleared them on June 6, 2016[5].

By early June, Weird Twitter took over the Harambe narrative. Users began photoshopping the gorilla into celebrity death tribute images alongside Prince, David Bowie, and Muhammad Ali[6]. Parody song lyrics about Harambe became so widespread that Twitter created a dedicated Moments page for them. Blink-182's Mark Hoppus contributed his own parody version[4].

The second major wave hit in early July when "Dicks Out for Harambe" exploded. On July 2, Twitter user @sexualjumanji posted a selfie with a replica firearm captioned about avenging Harambe[4]. On July 4, comedian Brandon Wardell tweeted the phrase "dicks out for harambe"[4]. Wardell followed up with Vine videos, including one with actor Danny Trejo that hit 2.2 million loops within five days[4]. On July 7, Twitter user @weebriel claimed to have originally coined the phrase in a Twitch chat session[4].

On July 10, Ohio teen Max Brinton and his friends tricked Google Maps into renaming their high school's Shankland Road to "Harambe Drive." Google honored the change for nearly two weeks before correcting it[17]. By August 20, a hacker took over Cincinnati Zoo director Thane Maynard's Twitter account and filled his feed with Harambe hashtags and jokes[4].

By late summer 2016, Change.org listed 253 separate Harambe-related petitions, including proposals to rename the Cincinnati Bengals, add his face to Mount Rushmore, put him on the dollar bill, clone him, and canonize him as a saint[7].

## How to Use
Harambe memes don't follow one rigid template. They work across many formats:
1. **Memorial image:** Place Harambe in a "RIP Legends" collage alongside recently deceased celebrities, giving him equal or greater status. The more absurd the pairing, the better.
2. **Song parody:** Take any popular song and rewrite the lyrics to be about Harambe. The tone is typically mock-dramatic and sincere.
3. **Ironic tribute:** Post an over-the-top eulogy for Harambe as if he were a close personal friend or historical figure. Treat his death as a pivotal event in modern history.
4. **Timeline split reference:** Invoke the joke theory that Harambe's death broke the timeline. Use it as an explanation for anything going wrong in the world.
5. **"Dicks Out" declaration:** Drop the phrase as an absurd rallying cry for any cause, no matter how unrelated.

## Cultural Impact
Harambe generated extensive media coverage throughout 2016. The Associated Press, CNN, BBC, NBC News, TIME, and The Daily Dot all published pieces on the meme and the incident behind it[7][1][14][2][13][6]. The Atlantic analyzed Harambe as "the perfect meme," arguing that the meaninglessness of the original event made it ideal for viral spread because no narrative could contain it[11].

The Cincinnati Zoo publicly begged people to stop with the memes. Director Maynard told the AP: "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"[15]. That plea, predictably, only fed the fire. The zoo temporarily deleted its Twitter account due to the nonstop Harambe mentions[9].

The UMass Amherst email controversy placed Harambe at the center of campus free speech debates in September 2016. The FIRE organization used the incident to argue that UMass's harassment policy was broad enough to ban gorilla jokes and needed revision[23]. Vice confirmed through the university's press office that no formal ban existed[24].

Immediately after the shooting, zookeepers extracted and preserved Harambe's sperm in a "frozen zoo" for future conservation efforts. "There's a future," the zoo's director declared. "It's not the end of his gene pool"[10].

By June 2016 primatologist Jane Goodall had emailed Cincinnati Zoo director Thane Maynard with her own read of the incident, writing that "it looked as though the gorilla was putting an arm round the child, like the female who rescued and returned the child from the Chicago exhibit"[33]. The letter, leaked and screencapped across Twitter, fueled the camp that argued Harambe should never have been shot.

The meme then split into branches that ran in parallel through the summer. "Bush did Harambe," a riff on the "Bush did 9/11" format, picked up after July 2016 photos resurfaced of George W. Bush meeting Harambe's mother during a 1996 visit to the Cincinnati Zoo[34]. "Out of respect for Harambe" became its own template, with users mock-announcing they were canceling random behaviors as tribute, the joke leaning on the gap between the gravity of the framing and the triviality of the activity. By August, "Harambe was an inside job" photoshops layered on conspiracy-theory styling, sometimes paired with halo and sainthood iconography that pulled Harambe into the absurdist deity register Weird Twitter had been cultivating[35].

After the November 2016 US election, a widely shared claim that Harambe pulled 11,000 to 15,000 write-in votes for president spread across social media. Snopes, PolitiFact, and CNN all debunked the figure, pointing out that 34 states require write-in candidates to pre-register and that aggregated national write-in totals aren't even published in most jurisdictions[36]. The real number is unknown, but Harambe did get at least a few real votes: Axios Charlotte documented 44 write-ins for him on Mecklenburg County ballots alone[37].

By mid-2017 a "timeline split" theory crystallized on Reddit and Twitter, with users half-jokingly arguing that Harambe's death marked the moment the universe forked into the darker of two possible paths. The bit turned into one of the more durable post-irony frameworks for processing later bad news, and Harambe outlasted almost every other 2016 entry by treating him as load-bearing cosmology rather than a punchline.

## Fun Facts
- Harambe's name comes from the Swahili word "harambee," meaning communal labor. He was named after a 1988 Rita Marley song, "Harambe (Working Together for Freedom)"[5].
- Harambe was killed one day after his 17th birthday[5].
- A Change.org search in 2016 turned up 253 separate Harambe-related petitions, including ones to rename the Cincinnati Bengals, add Harambe to Mount Rushmore, and canonize him[7].
- The Philadelphia Zoo held its own gorilla naming contest and explicitly ruled out any Harambe-related names, including "Harambe McHarambeface" and "Harambaby"[22].
- UMass Amherst already had a residential community called "Harambe" (from the Swahili word) before the meme existed, focused on African and African American heritage[16].

## Frequently Asked Questions
### What is Harambe?
Harambe is a meme born from the May 2016 shooting of a gorilla at the Cincinnati Zoo after a child fell into his enclosure. The meme takes many forms, from ironic memorials and parody songs to the catchphrase "Dicks Out for Harambe"[4].

### Where did Harambe come from?
The meme originated from bystander video of the May 28, 2016 incident at the Cincinnati Zoo. The footage went viral on YouTube with 12.6 million views in 48 hours, and within days, Twitter and Reddit users began creating ironic tributes and mock-serious memorials[4].

### What does Harambe mean?
In meme context, Harambe represents exaggerated mourning pushed to absurd extremes. Users treat the gorilla's death as the defining tragedy of modern history, using over-the-top sincerity as the joke itself. The name "harambee" is Swahili for communal labor[5].

### How do you use Harambe?
Common approaches include placing Harambe in "RIP Legends" photo collages, rewriting song lyrics in his honor, posting mock-earnest eulogies, or dropping "Dicks Out for Harambe" as a non sequitur rallying cry[6].

### Is Harambe still popular?
Harambe peaked in the summer of 2016 and saw heavy use through 2017. As of the late 2010s, it was semi-active, surfacing mostly in throwback posts, meta-commentary, and the ironic "timeline split" conspiracy theory[11].

### Why was Harambe shot?
Zoo officials decided lethal force was necessary because a tranquilizer dart could take five to ten minutes to take effect and might have further agitated the 440-pound gorilla. Director Thane Maynard stated the child was "at risk" and that zookeepers couldn't "take a risk with a silverback gorilla"[2].

### What is "Dicks Out for Harambe"?
An intentionally shocking and nonsensical slogan expressing ironic solidarity with Harambe. It was popularized by comedian Brandon Wardell, who tweeted the phrase on July 4, 2016, and followed up with Vine videos including one with actor Danny Trejo[4].

### Did Harambe really get votes for president?
Claims that Harambe received 15,000 write-in votes in the 2016 presidential election went viral but were debunked. Snopes pointed out that most states don't separately tally votes for unregistered write-in candidates, making the specific numbers impossible to verify[19].

### What did the Cincinnati Zoo say about the memes?
Zoo director Thane Maynard told the Associated Press: "We are not amused by the memes, petitions and signs about Harambe. Our zoo family is still healing." The zoo temporarily deleted its Twitter account due to constant mentions[15].

### Was Harambe McHarambeface real?
No. The story claiming a Chinese zoo named a baby gorilla "Harambe McHarambeface" through public vote was a hoax. The BBC traced it to a fake news site called the Boston Leader, registered just days before the story appeared. The Jinhua Zoo didn't appear to have any gorillas[22].

### Why did the UMass Amherst Harambe controversy happen?
Two residential advisors sent an email calling Harambe references "micro-aggressions" and a "direct attack" on the campus's African American community, partly because UMass had a residential program named "Harambe" from the Swahili word. The university later clarified this was not official policy[24].

### Why did Harambe last longer than other memes?
The Guardian identified a key factor: brands couldn't co-opt it. The dark humor around a gorilla's death was too edgy for corporate Twitter accounts, preventing the "marketing death cycle" that kills most viral trends[12]. The Atlantic argued the lack of a clear villain or narrative resolution kept people posting[11].

### What happened to the boy who fell into the enclosure?
The three-year-old was treated at Cincinnati Children's Hospital for non-life-threatening injuries including scrapes and a concussion. His family released a statement saying he was "home and doing just fine"[13]. Ohio prosecutors cleared the mother of any wrongdoing on June 6, 2016[5].

### What is the Harambe timeline split theory?
A semi-ironic conspiracy theory that emerged around 2017, mostly on Reddit and 4chan. The idea is that Harambe's death caused a cosmic fork in reality, and our universe took the wrong path, explaining everything from Trump's election to the pandemic[8].

## References
1. [Witnesses describe screams, shots at gorilla enclosure | CNN](<https://edition.cnn.com/2016/05/30/us/gorilla-shot-cincinnati-witnesses/>)
2. [Outrage Grows After Gorilla Harambe Shot Dead at Cincinnati Zoo to Save Tot](<https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/outrage-grows-after-gorilla-harambe-shot-dead-cincinnati-zoo-save-n582706>)
3. [Facebook Memes Compare Aboriginal Athlete To Gorilla That Was Fatally Shot](<https://www.buzzfeed.com/allanclarke/facebook-memes-compare-adam-goodes-to-the-gorilla-that-was-f?utm_term=.wqVde08gAa#.qw4nwAm2PJ>)
4. [Harambe - Know Your Meme](<https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/harambe-the-gorilla>)
5. [Harambe](<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harambe>)
6. [Harambe - Urban Dictionary](<https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Harambe>)
7. [Harambe the gorilla lives on in beautifully tasteless memes](<https://dailydot.com/harambe-gorilla-mourned-in-memes>)
8. [Harambe lives: Killed zoo gorilla gets a second life online](<https://web.archive.org/web/20160823053909/http://bigstory.ap.org/article/30e2268f9c084dcfbee37ee7b716a362/harambe-lives-killed-zoo-gorilla-gets-second-life-online>)
9. [Harambe Meme — Origin, Meaning, History | MemesGuy](<https://memesguy.com/meme/harambe>)
10. [From Tragedy To Internet Icon, The Incredible Story Of Harambe The Gorilla | Explainers News - News18](<https://www.news18.com/explainers/from-tragedy-to-internet-icon-the-incredible-story-of-harambe-the-gorilla-9358380.html>)
11. [Harambe | Discover the Harambe phenomenon — Learn More Now — Thomas Wharton - Writer](<https://www.thomaswharton.ca/harambe>)
12. [How Harambe Became the Perfect Meme - The Atlantic](<https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/09/harambe-the-perfect-meme/498743/>)
13. [Harambe: the meme that refused to die | X | The Guardian](<https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/aug/12/harambe-the-meme-that-refused-to-die>)
14. [Who are Michelle Gregg and Deonne Dickerson? Parents of boy who fell into gorilla enclosure pictured - The Mirror](<https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/who-michelle-gregg-deonne-dickerson-8086091>)
15. [Cincinnati Gorilla: What to Know About Harambe | TIME](<https://time.com/4352001/cincinnati-zoo-gorilla-killed-harambe-boy-toddler/>)
16. [Justice for Harambe: Mother harassed online after gorilla shot dead - BBC News](<https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-36416350>)
17. [Harambe: Stop making memes of our dead gorilla, Cincinnati Zoo pleads | The Independent | The Independent](<https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/harambe-memes-cincinnati-zoo-gorilla-shot-dead-rip-a7203356.html>)
18. [UMass Resident Advisors Call Harambe Memes 'Direct Attack' on African-Americans](<https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/09/06/umass-bans-harambe-memes-direct-attack-african-americans/>)
19. [These Teens Tricked Google Into Honoring Harambe The Gorilla](<https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/davidmack/rip-harambe-the-gorilla-who-died#.ayBNj3wDd>)
20. [Gorilla named Harambe McHarambeface at Chinese zoo after visitors asked to choose name | Daily Mail Online](<https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3786973/Gorilla-named-Harambe-McHarambeface-Chinese-zoo-visitors-asked-choose-one.html#ixzz4KFBL9mgp>)
21. [Harambe, A Dead Gorilla, Got Over 15,000 Votes for President of the United States? | Snopes.com](<https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/harambe-15000-votes/>)
22. [Harambe, A Dead Gorilla, Got Over 15,000 Votes For President Of The Unites States - Daily Snark](<https://dailysnark.com/2016/11/08/harambe-dead-gorilla-got-11000-votes-president-unites-states/>)
23. [about-the-rumor-that-harambe-got-over-10000-votes-](<https://www.usatoday.com/story/college/2016/11/09/about-the-rumor-that-harambe-got-over-10000-votes-/37424555/>)
24. [14,000 People Probably Didn't Vote For Harambe To Be The Next US President](<https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/kassycho/14000-people-probably-didnt-vote-for-harambe-to-be-the-next#.osgn37Jro>)
25. [Harambe McHarambeface is Fakey McFakeface - BBC News](<https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-37352259>)
26. [Baby gorilla named Harambe McHarambeface after zoo asks public to vote | Metro News](<https://metro.co.uk/2016/09/13/baby-gorilla-named-harambe-mcharambeface-after-zoo-asks-public-to-vote-6125369/#ixzz4KFCPdisd>)
27. [UMass RAs Are Not Amused by Your Harambe Memes | The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression](<https://www.thefire.org/umass-ras-are-not-amused-by-your-harambe-memes/>)
28. [Culture – UPROXX](<https://uproxx.com/culture/harambe-2/>)
29. [Calm Down, a University Didn't Ban Harambe Jokes](<https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/5gqg8q/umass-amherst-harambe-ban-free-speech-calm-down-vgtrn>)
30. ['Harambe McHarambeface' wins Chinese zoo's gorilla naming contest](<https://web.archive.org/web/20161114104528/https://www.bostonleader.com:80/harambe-mcharambeface-wins-chinese-zoos-gorilla-naming-contest/>)
31. [Gorilla 'named Harambe McHarambeface after zoo's public vote' - but is story too good be true? - The Mirror](<https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/gorilla-named-harambe-mcharambeface-after-8823715>)
32. [Harambe the gorilla lives on in beautifully tasteless memes](<https://www.dailydot.com/unclick/harambe-gorilla-mourned-in-memes/>)
33. [RE: Shooting of Harambe at Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden — Jane Goodall Institute](<https://www.janegoodall.org/wp-content/uploads/2796_001.pdf>)
34. [George W. Bush Didn't Kill Harambe, The Internet Is Just Weird](<https://www.texasmonthly.com/the-daily-post/george-w-bush-didnt-kill-harambe-internet-just-weird/>)
35. [HARAMBE WAS AN INSIDE JOB — Know Your Meme](<https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1155766-harambe-the-gorilla>)
36. [Did Harambe Get Over 15,000 Votes for President? — Snopes](<https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/harambe-15000-votes/>)
37. [At least 44 of you voted for Harambe for public office — Axios Charlotte](<https://www.axios.com/local/charlotte/2016/12/12/harambe-for-president-75100>)

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