I lost a hero this year, as well as any sense of meaning in my life.

As you all are keenly aware of, 2016 has been possibly one of the bleakest years so far. We’ve lost so many of our idols in the past few months, from David Bowie to Muhammad Ali. It seems like once we’ve finished mourning one of them, another one is tragically taken away from us. Amid all of these losses, one of them hits the hardest for me. Every day I wake up crying, knowing that he isn’t with us anymore. He was a hero and a role model for us all. Thats right: I’m talking about the one and only Harambe. For those of you who are Amish and have never gone online to see the reactions (also if you’re Amish how are you reading this?), let me tell you about the rise and fall of our hero Harambe. How did he die? What led to his rise to stardom? All this and more in today’s heart wrenching article Come and mourn with us.

Harambe was a silverback gorilla in residence at the Cincinnati Zoo. He was fatally shot by one of the zoo workers when a three year old boy managed to fall into his enclosure. The incident was caught on camera by an onlooker and soon flooded the internet and television news. This then sparked numerous debates online whether or not Harambe should’ve been shot. People dissected the video as if it were the new JFK assassination footage of this generation and it spiraled from there.

Screenshot from Harambe’s well-documented shooting, just moments before it happens.

Many protested that the zoo keeper was in the wrong while others took the time to drag the three year old’s parents through the mud and calling for their arrest. Despite all of these debates, whats done is done and doesn’t make it any less tragic on all sides. But the curious side of this whole thing,is that soon after the debates began to die down the internet did what it naturally does and turned Harambe into a meme superstar.

When the Harambe incident happened, millions of people chimed in about it and how tragic it was. You couldn’t go on Facebook for a good two weeks or so without someone arguing for or against Harambe’s shooting. There was so much discourse over the whole issue because it was well documented and it wasn’t such a clear cut issue. People spent weeks picking apart the Harambe video frame for frame trying to find some evidence for either side of their argument. The other side is that at face value it seemed like such a muddled issue. Unlike say Cecil the Lion a few months back, where everyone resoundingly chastised the dentist who killed the endangered lion, Harambe’s shooting was seen as necessary to some while unneeded by others.

People protesting outside the Cincinnati Zoo days after Harambe was shot.

The debates went on without end, and a majority of the internet just got fed up with it. The entire Harambe discourse drowned out any meaningful conversation about actual social injustices or actual discussions about animal rights. So to divert the conversations that many deemed unnecessary, the internet decided to turn it into a joke. Thats where the satirical aspect of the story comes in.

The memes took Harambe’s death to the next level and presented the death and the following protests as if it was one giant conspiracy theory or as if it was a human being wrongly shot dead. They’re used to almost make fun of those who take Harambe’s death as a serious injustice instead of a tragic occurrence that was just blown way out of proportion. So many people were quick to react to Harambe’s death, but many of these same people stay silent when actual injustices are being carried out on a daily basis. This proves the hypocrisy that people are more willing to care about and protest over an animal than their fellow human beings.

People miss Harambe so much that they immortalized him in Pokemon form, then soon started a petition to get him into the upcoming Pokemon games Sun and Moon.

In the end, Harambe’s death was tragic but did not need the extreme amounts of coverage that it garnered. In my opinion, the zoo keepers were in the right for shooting him. Even though they’re in zoos, animals are still animals and you never know what they’re going to do next. It was either Harambe or the kid. But I also believe that this could’ve been a good opportunity to open discussions about animal rights, but the media turned the bigger, overarching conversation into a blame game over who was responisble for Harambe’s death instead. There has been a silver lining to this whole discourse though. Numerous conversations have been started over animal conservation here and there and donations towards gorilla conservation specifically have risen ever since Harambe’s death. If you would like to contribute to the cause, you can donate money to the Cincinnati Zoo’s gorilla conservation efforts here. It’s what Harambe would’ve wanted.