Gorillas, as a species, are having a great 2017. First came the return of the band bearing their name, then the viral success of a gorilla going very literally apeshit in a kiddie pool over the weekend. Now comes this chill, sagacious gorilla breaking shit down for an assembled audience of intellectually curious viewers. This image seems to say, “Gather ’round, stupid humans, and let’s talk about the rise of conspiracy culture in America as viewed through the fiction of Thomas Pynchon,” or some shit:
In actuality, this huge-ass primate is just hanging out in front of some viewers at the Los Angeles Zoo in a promotional image for its summer music series. Soon, however, the explanatory pose he was striking and foreground of receptive viewers brought to mind Harambe:
A TED Talk:
And, from there, a parody of all sorts of bad internet loquaciousness:
And pop culture references:
Anyway, the point of the story is this: It’s funny when gorillas do human things, and gorillas seem to be getting wise to this. We look forward to next week’s “lonely gorilla eating a sandwich” meme, in which a gorilla looks just like a lonely man eating a sandwich but is actually just performing one of the few actions it can while in captivity and being constantly observed by an internet-connected populace that divorces images from their original context and sardonically recirculates them in a hyper-competitive online environment. Hey, that sounds like something this smart gorilla could explain to us!