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 and headline became the increasing subject of meme 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^[1] published an article by Dan Kozuh, titled "We Taught This Chimpanzee to Understand the American Political System and He Hanged Himself." The publication shared the article on its X^[2] / Twitter page the next day, garnering over 400 likes in six years.

On October 25th, an edited image combining the article's thumbnail image and a new headline, reading, "We Taught This Chimpanzee to Understand the Argentine Economic System and He Hanged Himself," was posted to the /r/comedyheaven^[3] subreddit with the title "RIP," garnering over 4,000 upvotes in six years.

Spread

The Hard Times headline meme continued to spread to various sites and communities over the following years as it received further edits.

On October 26th, 2020, Redditor goldman_22 posted an Awkward Look Monkey version of the meme to the /r/memes^[4] subreddit, garnering over 29,000 upvotes in six years.

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^[5] subreddit by Redditor Le-Vagabond27, garnering over 5,900 upvotes in nine months.

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^[6] subreddit, garnering over 1,500 upvotes in eight months.

On December 3rd, Instagram^[7] user professorgutsv2 posted a version of the meme about director Quentin Tarantino that gained over 4,100 likes in a month.

On January 20th, 2026, X^[8] user @klunsgod posted a redraw of the meme in response to a post by Nintendo of America announcing a surprise update for the game Donkey Kong Country: Returns HD that gained over 5,500 likes in a day.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References