Baby of #AprilTheGiraffe Is Here!

Posted on by Moriah Ratner

After much anticipation, April, a giraffe at Animal Adventure Park in Harpursville, N.Y., has given birth to its fourth calf.

Social media has gone wild, with users sharing live streams of the birth and congratulating April. Much jubilation can be inferred from the Tweets, as well as a few of those who are more nauseated than happily amazed. Using gifs has been a way to express the mixed emotions towards Mother Nature’s glory.

Furthermore, people have been able to use humor to relate current political discourses to this trending social media outburst of exhilaration. Tying this event to current events reveals the ways in which the public uses allegories to illustrate a viewpoint.

We even see users making jokes and references to the recent United snafu. Twitter is allowing people to guide people as to how they should feel in watching the birth. In using these references, we can control our perceptions as to how we should be feeling when we hear this news because we are able to relate it to the same feelings felt during past events.

Though Mother Nature is a beautiful thing, some users are not as happy to watch the birth as others. These people use Twitter as a way to warn potential viewers that it may be a graphic experience that can deter our thoughts.

Rather than promoting the birth, the post below recommends keeping people occupied while awaiting the news, suggesting an anxious tone towards the event.

This experience exemplifies how social media allows people to offer their own standpoint on a current event, whether that be using humor to express emotions towards the event or communicate skepticism on the popularity of the event.

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