Meme History: Chad Memes

Do you think you're better than everyone else, but are too good to explain why? Do you have gigantic muscles that you use for nothing practical other than defining your entire persona? Do you have an unhealthy and unrealistic conception of masculinity?

If you answered yes to any of these, you might be a Chad.

Chad is a name that appears in pop culture as a joke long before its origins as a true internet meme.

According to the Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language, it originates as far back as World War II, used by British soldiers to refer to members of the Royal Air Force.

For our purposes, we first see Chad in the Urban Dictionary at least as early as 2005, describing something that's “rubbish or unworthy.”

On August 10th, 2013, the first instance of “Chad Thundercock” appears there.

It describes a stereotypical high school/college alpha male, successful with women, and often oblivious. This definition appears to come from an obvious place—4Chan.

And we know that because soon after, a Chad Thundercock Tumblr appeared, referencing 4Chan posts where people were apparently already talking about it as an established thing.

But what exactly that thing is, is a trope that's illustrated in cartoons, standard phrasing, and memes from across the internet. 

Chad's face

Chad's face is probably its most immediately understood aspect.

According to the 4Chan snippet embedded in the Chad Thundercock Tumblr, the platonic Chad is 6’ 2”, broad shoulders, fit body with a handsome face that includes a strong jaw and masculine brow, and the limbal rings in the eyes—these areas between the irises and the whites.

Fast forward to 2020, videos demonstrating this face via TikTok's face stretch filter abounded.

And there are even tutorials online showing viewers how to mew and pose your eyebrows like Chad to appear more like one in real life.

Bonus points if you're able to work the pouty lips in there as well. 

Gigachad

Perhaps no one person's face is more naturally emblematic of this than Gigachad, the most extreme and physically obvious Chad example known to the meme world.

We've already done a whole video on him, which you can go watch, but here are the cliff notes.

In 2016, photo artist Krista Sudmalis began taking a series of photos of her boyfriend, Ernest Khalimov.

The photos are very photoshopped, but he is in fact a real person. In 2017, seeing just how jacked and chiseled he appears to be, a 4Chan user applied the prefix “giga” for a billion to him, calling him “the perfect human specimen” who was “destined to lead us against the reptilians.”

In 2021, a Gigachad NFT collection was launched, and in 2023, he got his own large language model which users can chat with.

And in an interview with The Daily Dot, he appeared to accurately predict the outcome of the 2024 presidential election.

But where you might be more familiar with the Chad fandom has to do with his spread in the form of comics.

Back in 2016, around the same time that the rest of the Chad-verse was burgeoning, this cartoon of what was called “The Virgin Walk” was posted to both 4Chan’s /49k/ board, as well as to FunnyJunk.

It was quickly juxtaposed with a similar comic, this time of a dumb and bow-legged, if square-jawed man: Chad.

While the virgin featured color text that includes, “avoids eye contact,” and “struggled to find comfortable hand form,” Chad was described with quips like, “intentionally slaps and batters incoming traffic, “to make his own path,” and walking form is poised like a Greek statue “perpetually in contrapposto.”

Soon, more 4Channers created more versions of this, involving working out, internet shopping, sitting, and studying, which further fleshes out this trope.

'Yes Chad'

And finally, we have “Yes, Chad.”

Also known as “Nordic Gamer,” this face and side profile often appear alongside Wojack variants and other comics.

He originates in a super racist 4Chan forum juxtaposed against someone of Mediterranean descent.

But yes, Chad really took off as a meme following a 2019 tweet where he was pitted against an unrelated comic.

This is the format that seemed to work for him, because in the current day, he's almost never seen alone. Appropriately, Yes, Chad often only says, “yes” to whatever thing he's prompted with, which gives him a standoffish and superior tone.

Note, again, the blonde hair, full beard, full jawline, and almost idiotic levels of self-assuredness. Airheadedness is the word that comes to mind when we talk about Chad.

But it's a weird thing, because while Chad himself is defined partially by his obliviousness and confidence, the meme is pretty self-aware and self-deprecating.

You have to understand who Chad is in order to make a meme making fun of him.

But Chad himself, despite all of his muscles, probably couldn't think any of that through if he tried.

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