Satirical Headline From 2020 'The Hard News' Article About The Tragic Fate Of A Chimpanzee Becomes A Meme

4 months ago 47

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About

We Taught This Chimpanzee and He Hanged Himself is an exploitable meme format based on a story by the satirical news site The Hard Times titled, "We Taught This Chimpanzee to Understand the American Political System and He Hanged Himself." The article was published in October 2020 and spread online over the following years. In 2025, the article's thumbnail became the increasing subject of edits and redraws, in which the caption and the chimpanzee are replaced to reference another subject.

Origin

On October 21st, 2020, the satirical online publication The Hard Times published an article by Dan Kozuh titled, "We Taught This Chimpanzee to Understand the American Political System and He Hanged Himself." The shared the article on their X page the next day, garnering over 400 likes in six years.

An article by The Hard Times satire website. It is titled, "We Taught This Chimpanzee to Understand the American Political System and He Hanged Himself."

On October 25th, an edited image combining the article's thumbnail image and a new title reading, "We Taught This Chimpanzee to Understand the Argentine Economic System and He Hanged Himself" was posted to the /r/comedyheaven subreddit with the title "RIP," garnering over 4,000 upvotes in six years.

Spread

The meme continued to spread over the following years.

On October 26th, 2020, Redditor u/goldman_22 posted an Awkward Look Monkey version of the meme to the /r/memes subreddit, garnering over 29,000 upvotes in six years.

An awkward monkey puppet meme. The meme is about the man who taught a chimp to tie a noose.

In 2025, the meme saw a resurgence in popularity. On April 2nd, 2025, a meme inspired by the chimpanzee meme was posted to the /r/Grimdank subreddit by Redditor u/Le-Vagabond27, garnering over 5,900 upvotes in nine months.

We Taught This Ork the imperial administration system and he krumped himself

On May 7th, 2025, a now-deleted Redditor posted an edit of the meme about Magic the Gathering and Yu-Gi-Oh to the /r/masterduel subreddit, garnering over 1,500 upvotes in eight months.

On December 3rd, Instagram user professorgutsv2 posted a version of the meme about Quentin Tarantino that gained over 4,100 likes in a month.

On January 20th, 2026, X user @klunsgod posted a redraw of the meme in response to a post by Nintendo of America announcing a surprise update for Donkey Kong Country: Returns HD that gained over 5,500 likes in a day.