Retard Chad

About

Retard Chad, also known as Gigadowns, refers to a black-and-white photograph of a man with down syndrome resting his chin on his thumbs. Used in memes since 2017, the photograph saw a resurgence in May 2022 through use by Sigma Male Twitter accounts in which he was presented as a powerful figure who opposes or otherwise interacts with GigaChad.

Origin

In 2009, Massachusetts-based photographer Rick Ashley started his project "Michael," taking photographs of his brother-in-law Michael.^[1] In a black-in-white photograph that is a part of the project, Michael is depicted resting his chin on the thumbs of his folded arms (shown below).

In the mid-2010s, the project was reported on by multiple blogs and media, including reports by Huffington Post,^[2] Feature Shoot^[1] and The Mighty,^[3] with many of the stories including the black-and-white photo.

The image was first used in memes prior to March 28th, 2017, when an unknown user captioned it, "Name's Todd, Retodd" (original post could not be discovered). On March 28th, 2017, Twitter^[4] user @806931824106733568 made the earliest found repost of the image, with the post getting scraped by me.me^[5] (shown below).

Spread

Starting at least as early as July 2017, the captioned image has been used on 4chan as a reaction on /b/,^[6] /k/^[7] and other boards, also being circulated through reposts on iFunny,^[8] Reddit^[9] and other sites. On March 18th, a 9GAG^[10] user reposted another meme based on the image created by an unknown user (shown below).

On January 22nd, 2021, iFunny^[11] user cripKilla7615 reposted the "retodd" meme, with the post garnering over 48,200 smiles on the app in one year.

The meme started gaining popularity on Twitter in early May 2022. For example, on May 3rd, 2022, Twitter^[12] user @RetardStinky posted a Refuses to Elaborate Further meme using the image, with the post gaining 28 likes (shown below, left). On May 3rd, 2022, Twitter^[13] user @PenalWarden posted a meme in which Retard Chad interacted with GigaChad, with the post gaining over 60 retweets and 230 likes in ten days (shown below, center). On May 11th, Twitter user @hereliesthighs posted another meme that gained over 70 retweets and 670 likes (shown below, right), with the user making multiple posts with the character in the following days.

In the following days, the character achieved major popularity with Sigma Male accounts on Twitter, which posted memes in which Retard Chad opposed GigaChad or otherwise interacted with him.

Various Examples

Templates

Search Interest

External References