One of the many, many, many strange things we will be forced to explain to our children is A) why a gorilla named Harambe got shot at a zoo and why B) that gorilla immediately became a bizarre pop culture martyr. It’s about to get that much harder, now that everybody is convinced Apple memorized Harambe with an emoji.
Unicode, the people who basically ensure computers made by different companies can talk to each other, put out the Unicode 9.0.0 standard back in June, which, among other things, added 72 new emoji. Apple implemented 9.0 yesterday, and, well, the gorilla emoji immediately took off because it can’t just be a generic gorilla:
https://twitter.com/isamuelwayne/status/808663427250065408
https://twitter.com/SChanel199/status/808396629631991808
🦍 #Harambe got his emoji #RestInPeace
— Mike D…..🇯🇲🇹🇹 2.12♒️ (@rude_boi52) December 13, 2016
wish #harambe got 2have a Xmas but at least his legacy livesna~pathetic what happ 2him~The Harambe emoji is here! ”https://t.co/8p7TBOc6E5 pic.twitter.com/ad3UdhQ5tk
— LopeLangedolphindiva (@izmo88) December 13, 2016
If you were wondering, according to Unicode, it really is just a gorilla, not Harambe. Even if Unicode were that into memes, and these guys take emoji more seriously than any teenager, his killing happened in May and Unicode doesn’t turn things around that quickly. On the other hand, we’re talking about people who half-seriously want to take their genitals out to memorialize a dead gorilla, so we’re not sure anything would stop them from calling it the Harambe emoji anyway. Knowing the internet, we’re sure dick pics will be arriving with this emoji en masse any second now.
(via Twitter)