A chubby sea otter doesn't need much help reaching iconic meme status, but Monterey Bay Aquarium tried to help one of its charges along by adding some sassy phrases to a tweet featuring the animal.
To celebrate Abby, a rather substantial sea otter, the aqarium tried to emulate an innocent fat cat meme – but doomed itself by including a few slang words typically used to appreciably describe large black women.
Monterey Bay Aquarium is in California, – and also on Twitter, – so it didn't go well. Cultural appropriation isn't something the woke crowd will let slide – even from a body-positive sea mammal.
A day after posting the original tweet, the aquarium prostrated itself before the internet, apologizing for the "problematic and insensitive" language and inviting everyone to take part in its "learning moment."
Hey everyone. It has come to our attention that some of the references in this tweet are problematic and insensitive. We're posting here in the thread so that people who have engaged with this tweet will join us in our learning moment. 1/4
— Monterey Bay Aquarium (@MontereyAq) December 19, 2018
Several people appeared genuinely offended,
There's a reason we tell non-AA folks to avoid using AAVE: Our language, humor, and cultural references are borne from some of humanity's worst atrocities. If you haven't endured that pain, you can't know where the faultlines in our expression are. Please do better next time.
— Post-Surgical Agitator ☭