On the internet, it is not the fittest who survive, but those glowing with some other strange quality—an innate understanding of (shiver) virality. While YouTube and Twitter are strewn with the eerie rictuses of would-be internet celebrities, eagerly pleading with you to join the conversation and sound off in the comments below, others receive internet fame immediately and unbidden, its scorching heat incinerating the paper structures of their private leaves as as the public clamors to know more about this Chewbacca Mom, this Damn Daniel, this Kenneth Bone.
And so what to make of the following tweet? Is this a hungry ghost roaming the digital wasteland in search of Reddit upvotes and brief IRL hilarity, or someone who fate deigned to withstand the eye of online scrutiny?
According to an interview with The Daily Dot, it is the latter. As she told them:
“My parents, when I was born, they were both Rastafarians. So my mom kinda picked my first name, and ‘Isis’ was a Bob Dylan song, along with the Egyptian goddess, and then Harambe means ‘Harmony’ in Swahili, and my Dad picked my middle name.”
So it came to pass that a human would be named after the world’s most feared terrorist cell as well as the world’s most groaned-over meme. (Her last name, for what it’s worth, is Spjut, which means “spear” in Scandinavian, making it the rare triple-crown of conversation-starting names.) Young Isis Harambe says she would never change her name to seek fame, and The Daily Dot checked in with the California DMV, who confirmed issuing a license to one Isis Harambe in January of this year, although that would mean she received the ID in question after both names were well-known.
And yet, even then: Would you sleep better knowing this was the result of a cosmic coincidence, or a concerted effort to achieve exactly this level of renown? It’s a lot safer, at least, than eating a picture of Jason Segel every day.