Responding, Cincinnati Zoo said the constant mentions were making it hard for staff to move on. In order to save the 3-year-old boy, staff had to fatally shoot Harambe, a 17-year-old western lowland gorilla.
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“Harambe became a referendum on and a satire of social-media-outrage culture, his name a stand-in for everything wrong with the way social media reacts to news”, Feldman wrote.
“Harambe can’t run anymore because you killed him”, another Twitter user added.
Harambe’s death in late May ignited a whirlwind of memes nominating the gorilla for president, pleading for his resurrection and taking aim at zookeepers for firing the fatal shots.
There was also an online petition criticising the boy’s mother, Michelle Gregg, who defended herself by saying on twitter: “As a society we are quick to judge how a parent could take their eyes off of their child”.
The zoo’s disappearing Twitter trick did not escape the watchful eyes of followers.
And now that the Cincinnati Zoo has Harambed its own Twitter account, jokes about its shuttering have started to pop up. The zoo reopened its gorilla exhibit with a higher, reinforced barrier and urged support for gorilla conservation efforts.
Mr Maynard said the jokes about Harambe were highly upsetting to zoo staff.
Although zoo officials did not immediately offer specifics about why it closed its widely-followed Twitter account, its director told The Associated Press hours earlier that the incessant online taunting isn’t welcomed by those who were close to the ape.
Cincinnati zoo officials say they are “not amused” by the numerous memes and petitions created after one of its gorillas was shot dead.
Web editor at Cincinnati news station WCPO James Leggate said he believed the whole thing had spiralled out of control. “It shows people are remembering what a wonderful being he was”, he said.
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‘But the ones that are mocking and making light of the death of this being, I find incredibly offensive’.
