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Cincinnati Zoo reactivates Twitter account

Posted at 1:26 AM, Oct 19, 2016
and last updated 2016-10-19 08:09:57-04

CINCINNATI -- The Cincinnati Zoo has had a hard year on social media, but the Tuesday morning reactivation of its Twitter account shows it may be ready to bounce back.

After the death of Harambe the gorilla -- an event that briefly became so ubiquitous in the national news cycle that the details don't need to be repeated -- the zoo's social media accounts became the target of a seemingly endless barrage of Harambe memes and spam from the far reaches of the internet.

The zoo made an Instagram post about baby cheetahs? Harambe would have loved them, dozens of trolls rushed to inform the staff. A tweet about meerkats snuggling with their families? Harambe had a family. And so on.

 

The zoo deactivated its Twitter account in Augustafter the torrents of spam led to instances of staff members' personal accounts being hacked.

The reactivated account had already racked up dozens of Harambe-related comments on its innocuous tweets about sustainability by the time Tuesday rolled over into Wednesday, because of course it had. If we know anything about the internet, they won't stop any time soon.

Godspeed, @CincinnatiZoo.