COLUMBUS – Nearly two years after the fatal shooting of Cincinnati Zoo gorilla, Harambe, there is still one person talking about the incident and making the same jokes which were cycled around the internet for months in 2016. The shooting occurred on May 28, 2016, as a result of a child falling into the lowland gorilla’s enclosure.
Shortly after the event, there was an uproar throughout social media about the killing. People believed the situation could have been dealt with in a way which did not result in the death of the 17-year old ape. This eventually spawned a long and drawn out internet meme. The last good Harambe meme was reportedly posted on Reddit, on November 26, 2016. The submission contained a picture of a shot glass, with a caption which read, “take a shot for Harambe, he took one for you.” Since that post, the meme has all but faded into obscurity, that is except for anyone who has met Kevin Parks, an individual whose mother reported is “a total jackass.”
Parks, a 24-year old student at Ohio State University, has apparently been ignoring blatant social cues that Harambe jokes are no longer funny. When we attempted to interview him, Kevin responded with, “Bush did Harambe. Dicks out,” while mimicking undoing the zipper on his jeans.
Parks was, however, kind enough to leave the Sundial with his Reddit username. Upon investigation, we discovered that Parks, whose friends have denounced as “an unwitty buffoon,” has made over 50 posts in the past three months on various Reddit communities. None of his posts had more than zero points, and the only comments consisted largely of requests for Parks to “go fuck yourself.”
Parks’ ex-girlfriend, Madeline Golden, was kind enough to tell us about how painful it was to deal with such a seemingly out-of-touch significant other. “All of our mutual friends gradually stopped hanging out with us. Kevin didn’t seem to know why, but I am certain it was because he made everything we did about the stupid goddamn gorilla. Like, this one time we went to a lazer tag arena, and whenever he got shot he did this really exaggerated slow-motion fall, and then would look at anyone watching and say ‘never forget.’ And whenever I was in the mood for sex he tried to get me to roleplay as the child in his enclosure. It was so fucking weird. I know for a fact he wrote in ‘Harambe’ on his 2016 ballot too.”
Psychiatrists have refused to be around him long enough to make a proper diagnosis, but recommend that Ohio State students should “avoid this dangerously unhinged man who clearly has no concept of humor or comedic timing.”