So, um, what if something is really wrong with April the Giraffe's baby?

What if we're all glued to a very boring livestream, that's about to become a super depressing, not-alive-stream?

Our obsession with April's bulging belly began innocently enough. In the weeks following Trump’s inauguration, the world yearned for something—anything—good to latch onto. And somehow, this totally random, pregnant giraffe filled the order.

We flocked to her livestream in droves, hoping to catch sight of the calf that her keepers swore was going to come tumbling out Any. Second. Now.

He or she would be covered in goop, but would emerge otherwise unspoiled, unmonetized, unmemed. Yet: As with everything on the internet, it was too good to be true. It hasn't shown up yet.

And now, the bad thoughts loom.

It's now monthslater, and we're still here, still waiting, and still watching (if your boredom hasn't already caused you to tune out). And what started as our collective safe space has quickly morphed into what could be any other typical cesspool of online commentary. As April continues to lumber around her pen, unmoved by all the attention, her fans have started to turn on each other.

The issue, according to the Washington Post, is all the cashing in that the Animal Adventure Park (who operate April's livestream) and other parties have been doing. Some of her followers have been put off by the zoo's GoFundMe campaign, all the April gear, and even the paid text alerts about April’s condition.

But the biggest controversy by far has been the decision to let Toys R Us sponsor the zoo's livestream. No one knows how much they've handed over to score the rights to having their logo perched next to April, but Forbes reports that the toy retailer has reached some 28 million people so far, which they deemed as "something like the Internet version of the Super Bowl.”

Let's at least hope we're in the fourth quarter by now?

The longer this pregnancy lasts—and it feels like we’re on about our bazillionth week of waiting at this point—the more agitated people have become.

There was some degree of certainty that this was all an elaborate April Fool’s Day marketing stunt (it wasn’t). There're even those who began trying to convince people that in fact giraffes lay eggs. God bless the trolls.

And let's be clear: This isa marketing stunt, in as much as the zoo set up the livestream as a way to draw attention to themselves—but that’s the same as most people who bother putting anything on YouTube. The fact that it’s turned into an internet juggernaut was entirely the result of luck.

The only question is whether it'll turn out to be good luck, or that of the very, very bad stripe. Birth can a heartwarming miracle of nature, sure. But it can also be a devastating nightmare. An unexpectedly long pregnancy can buy you countless sets of ad-consuming eyeballs, but you run the real risk that people end up associating your brand with the gruesome birth of a deformed (or even worse: stillborn) giraffe.

Nature's an unpredictable force. For the moment, this livestream is insanely boring. It's literally just an uncomfortable looking giraffe, pacing around, in a pen that appears to be too small for any real kind of comfort. But what if this is taking so long because...there's something really wrong? Like, what if the calf is dead?

(And here, we should should note, it's probably not, because we can see it moving, but still: Think of the horror.)

There are genuinely so many ways this could go south. Will we all watch live if they perform an emergency C-section on camera?

A dark outcome would, in all honesty, be the fitting conclusion to this, a quintessential internet moment. After all, there's always darkness after the dawn of a viral sensation.

There was Ted Williams, the man with the golden voice—a former addict went from being homeless to being a YouTube sensation to being back in rehab. Let us not forget Gary from Chicago, the breakout star of this year’s Oscar’s ceremony who turned out to be an ex-convict. And even the charming-at-first Chewbacca Mom was not without her faults.

The point: Nothing is or can ever be sacred when the internet is involved. Remember: People even tried to drag the perfect and wonderful BBC Dad. While April probably won't end up in jail or rehab, she's a perfectly fitting ticking time bomb for all of us.

Best case scenario: April delivers a healthy baby hopefully in like five minutes because then we can all go home. The worst case, though? It only beginswith something going terribly awry during birth.

Of course, it doesn't end there. Instead of this turning into Toys R Us's biggest PR crisis ever, and all of us learning a lesson about the danger inherent in capitalizing on nature, April's tragedy becomes our next obsession. We create a slew of meme-orials for the giraffe(s) we have lost and we fall in love with them in a whole new way. We make our own Harambe 2.0.

See? We really are awful, and this is why we can't have nice things. Never Internet.

（作者：产品中心）