A viral photo of a 'Chad Cop' with an exaggerated hairstyle was actually a doctored picture from a 2016 protest

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A viral photo of a 'Chad Cop' with an exaggerated hairstyle was actually a doctored picture from a 2016 protest
Side-by-side images of the altered photo and the original shot.@NineteenEighty9/ Reddit/Scott Olson/Getty Images
  • A photo of a Chicago Police Officer and his exaggerated hairstyle is going viral for its resemblance to both Johnny Bravo and the popular "Chad" meme.
  • The iconic hairstyle has delighted Twitter users and Redditors who mocked the image.
  • The photo, however, has been edited to create the look.
  • The original image was taken in 2016 at a protest following the shooting death of Chicago teenager Pierre Loury.
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A photo of a Chicago Police Officer sporting an extreme hairstyle has gone viral for its resemblance to the popular "Chad" meme and the Cartoon Network character Johnny Bravo — but the widely-shared image has actually been altered to create the iconic look.

The photo first appeared to resurface on the 4chan forum/fit/ but went viral after Twitter user @warmfourloko shared the image next to the popular "Chad" meme, which has risen in popularity as online discourse surrounding "incels" and masculinity has intensified over the last decade. "

"Chad" has become a pejorative moniker among incels, used to describe attractive and sexually confident men. According to the "Know Your Meme" database, the term traveled from 4chan forums to Reddit and across other social media platforms — where "Chad" became synonymous with, as one Redditor described it, "the default name for alpha douchebros."

"[H]oly sh-t he's real," @warmgourloko captioned the tweet, which received 290,000 likes in just two days.

The following day, the image appeared on the r/funny subreddit, which boasts 31.8 million members, captioned "Chad is real." It was then re-posted to several popular subreddits, including r/Justfuckmyshitup, r/PewdiepieSubmissions, and r/blursedimages — a community that describes itself as a space for posting images that are "BOTH blessed and cursed."

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Chad is real from r/funny

Across subreddits, commenters delighted in the police officer's exaggerated look. Some dubbed him "Johnny Bravo IRL," as the hairstyle bears a striking resemblance to that of the main character from Cartoon Network's hit show that ran until 2004.

Others referred to the pictured officer as "Chad Cop."

The photo was also widely shared on Twitter, where users also likened the featured officer Johnny Bravo and the "Chad" meme — and some posted the photo along with messages about "defund[ing] the police."

The iconic hairstyle, however, does not appear in the original 2016 photo of the Chicago Police Officer.

Journalist Ryan Broderick shared a side-by-side comparison of the viral photo and the original image, snapped by news photographer Scott Olson, on Twitter.

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"So I actually totally fell for it when I first saw it, the photo going around Reddit of the Chad Cop is photoshopped," Broderick wrote.

The truth behind the image was met with some disappointment and amusement.

"[T]he fact that I thought this was real shows how far 2020 has degraded my mental health and sanity," one Twitter user quipped.

Several others described themselves as "saddened" to learn of the photoshopping, with some joking that their days had been "ruined" by the news.

The original photo, according to Getty Images, was taken at an April 2016 protest in Chicago following the death of Pierre Loury.

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A viral photo of a 'Chad Cop' with an exaggerated hairstyle was actually a doctored picture from a 2016 protest
The original image of the officer at a 2016 protest features a more 'standard' haircut.Scott Olson/Getty Images

Loury, a 16-year-old from the North Lawndale neighborhood, was shot by police after being pulled over for traveling in a vehicle matching the description of a car used in a drive-by shooting. Police say Loury fled the scene and an "armed confrontation" ensued.

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