Harambe's death still echoes 10 years later
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Memorials for Harambe at the Cincinnati Zoo in June 2016. Photo: John Sommers II/Getty Images
Ten years ago today, Cincinnati became the center of the internet after Harambe — a 17-year-old gorilla at the Cincinnati Zoo — died in one of the strangest viral news cycles of the social media era.
Flashback: On May 28, 2016, a 3-year-old boy entered the zoo's Gorilla World exhibit.
- Fearing the child could be seriously hurt or killed, a zoo response team shot Harambe, an endangered western lowland silverback.
- The child survived. Harambe didn't.
- What started as a local breaking news story quickly became a global media machine.
Casey's thought bubble: I was then working in comms for the city of Cincinnati, and much of my job quickly became monitoring nonstop tags on Twitter and fielding questions about whether the child's family might face criminal charges.
- "It was unlike anything I'd covered," my former WCPO-TV colleague Pat LaFleur recalled on Wednesday.
- "Ten years ago, a local story going viral was still a relatively new phenomenon to Cincinnati," he said. "The virality of Harambe's death quickly became the story itself."
State of play: The internet responded with tributes, conspiracy theories and endless posts treating Harambe as everything from a cultural martyr to a punchline.
- Rumors even ran rampant that tens of thousands of people wrote in "Harambe" for president in 2016.
Reality check: Back here in Cincinnati, it always felt more personal and tragic.
- A local family lived under a microscope, receiving judgment and enduring online harassment.
- Cincinnati, which had spent years trying to rewrite its national image, suddenly became the main character of the internet in the worst possible way.
And the worst part: A beloved gorilla — known affectionately by his keepers as "Handsome Harambe" — was gone in a moment that still sparks debate today.
The intrigue: The city and its zoo eventually got a happier internet storyline when Fiona, the premature hippo born in 2017, became a viral star.
Yes, but: Even now, many Cincinnatians (myself included) still pause for a second when they see a photo of "Handsome Harambe."