What you are seeing, on the left, is Björn Barrefors. He's a Swedish decathlete and heptathlete who went to the University of Nebraska. He went viral in 2012 for having a bodacious package and was seen largely as a paragon of masculinity. If you look up the other pics, yeah, holy shit. He was featured as early as 2009 on Outsports.com, a site for gay sports enthusiasts, for being blazingly hot when he initially started competing.

Cut to 2016 as the Chad vs. Virgin meme took off on 4chan. My theory is that Barrefors' strapping figure served as a reference template for someone to draw, potentially some sad incel shut-in who kept a folder of Chad Thundercock pictures to pore over resentfully. It's not hard to see the resemblance in the jutting arm and splayed legs in each picture.

Barrefors cuts an imposing figure as a tall handsome European man who got his degree in computer science. Either the person making the meme knew this and jealously assumed he just plows through hordes of women sexually like a grain thresher, or he just saw a hot dude who was much more cut than him and used the reference. I tend to think it's more the former. Given your average 4chan goon, and given the initial meme peddled in some sort of bastardized übermensch fantasia, it's much more likely. But the resemblance is unmistakable, and the reason for Chad's bizarre stance makes sense, as Barrefors is about to hurl a discus.

As a gay man, I cannot help but be struck by the homoeroticism of it. Barrefors' pictures prominently display his package which would be undeniably noticeable to anyone looking at them, but it's clearly an athletic cup. Even track-and-field athletes competing in individual feats of strength have to protect their genitals, so it's not like Barrefors is especially gifted in this area. You wouldn't know that looking at Chad's depiction, though.R The emphasis on his mighty bulge, his thick arms and puffed out chest, the envy that's quite evident in his depiction cuts somewhat gay despite attempts to skewer it. I don't know the identity of the person who initially made this image, but given 4chan's average user, he's a white cis heterosexual guy.

There you have it, though. What a dumb fucking meme born of misery, made better by the countless others who remixed it into something funnier.