Yusuf Dikeç

Origin

Yusuf Dikeç is a Türkiye shooter. At the Paris 2024 Olympics he won silver in the 10m air pistol mixed team event with Ševval İlayda Tarhan — Türkiye’s first Olympic medal in shooting. At 51 years and 212 days he also became the country’s oldest Olympic medallist.

What travelled the world, though, was not the result but a single photograph. Shooters normally layer on equipment: a specialist jacket, precision glasses with a blinder, ear protection. Dikeç stood there in ordinary clothes and everyday spectacles, his non-shooting hand in his pocket. Among competitors armoured in state-of-the-art gear he alone looked like a man who had turned up unprepared, and that contrast was the meme. His partner Tarhan likewise wore no blinder and kept one hand in her pocket.

Spread

The photograph spread on social media immediately after the event on July 30th, 2024 and circled the globe within a day. The memes generally built the same structure — the guy who wins without the equipment — casting it as Google Sheets versus Microsoft Excel, a man packing for a trip versus a woman, an anime protagonist versus a recently divorced engineer.

Japanese users in particular gave him a different name, calling him ‘Free User Ojisan’: the gamer who wins a freemium game without spending a penny. That nickname travelled with the image into the rest of Asia, Korea included. He was also paired with the Korean shooter Kim Ye-ji from the same Games, the two of them memed as contrasting figures.

Dikeç himself was unbothered: ‘I did not need special equipment. I’m a natural, a natural shooter.’

Usage

For anything achieved on ability alone, without preparation or equipment
Side-by-side comparisons of the over-equipped and the under-equipped
Extended, via the ‘free user’ framing, to winning without spending money in general

What distinguishes it is that it is admiration rather than mockery. The butt of the joke is not Dikeç but whoever bought all the gear and still did worse.