Yusuf Dikeç Turkish Pistol Shooter

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Part of a series on 2024 Olympic Shooters. [View Related Entries]

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About

Yusuf Dikeç is a Turkish Pistol Shooter who participated in the 2024 Summer Paris Olympics, among other Olympic Shooters, winning a silver medal in the mixed team event. A photo of Dikeç shooting with no specialized eyewear went viral on Twitter / X in late July 2024 and was used in memes, with many internet users joking about him looking like a passerby who just happened to pick up the pistol and compete or calling him a trained hitman and assassin sent by Turkey to eviscerate the competition. Dikeç is a retired officer of the Turkish Gendarmerie, a military force in Turkey. Dikeç also drew comparisons to Kim Yeji, a South Korean pistol shooter who was dubbed as having main character energy after photos of her went viral as well. Dikeç and Kim added to a growing trend of 2024 Olympic shooter memes that included many other Olympians from other countries.

History

Yusuf Dikeç was born on January 1st, 1973, in a village named Taşoluk in Turkey's Kahramanmaraş Province. He enrolled in military school in 1994 and served as a sergeant in Istanbul for a year after 1999. Dikeç began his pistol shooting career in 2001, competing in both the military national team and the Turkish national team.

On July 30th, 2024, Dikeç participated in the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics Mixed shooting event with his teammate Şevval İlayda Tarhan, winning the silver medal in the 10m air pistol event.^[1]

X^[2] user @LogKa11 was one of the first to make a viral post about the shooter, writing, "South Korea sent a fully-kitted out player for the Olympic shooting. Turkey sent an [sic] guy with no specialized lenses, eye cover or ear protection and got the silver medal." The post gathered over 490,000 likes in a day (seen below).

The post also received a reply from X^[3] user @merterdir, who joked about Dikeç's fully kitted "Inspector Gadget" opponent (seen below).

Other X^[4] users like @PicturesFoIder and @kirawontmiss posted about Dikeç in late July 2024, with the former gathering over 1 million likes on their post about the athlete in one day.

Online Presence

On July 31st, 2024, Yusuf Dikeç posted a photo recreating his now-viral shooting pose to his Instagram^[9] @yusufdikecofficial, gathering over 100,000 likes in a day (seen below). The image was also reposted to the subreddit /r/pics,^[6] where it gathered over 61,000 upvotes in a similar timeframe.

Also on August 1st, X^[10] user @PunchingCat posted a collage of Dikeç with his pet cat, gathering over 400,000 likes in a day (seen below).

Free User Ojisan /『無課金おじさん』

Many X / Twitter users posted about Dikeç's casual-seeming attire after images of him shooting with no specialized equipment went viral on July 31st, 2024. On July 31st, many Japanese users posted fan art of Dikeç, as seen in a post by @sakakir^[5] that gathered over 350,000 likes in a day (seen below, left).

Many Japanese X users jokingly began calling Dikeç "Free-To-Play Uncle" or "Free User Ojisan," a joke about how he resembles gamers who don't buy expensive in-game add-ons or power-ups. X^[8] user @mrjeffu posted about the trend on July 31st, gathering over 33,000 likes in a day (seen below, right).

On August 1st, 2024, X^[7] user @kankichi edited a video of Dikeç shooting to add the song "Get Wild," from the anime City Hunter. The post gathered over 100,000 likes in a day (seen below).

Turkey Sent A Hitman / Assassin Jokes

On July 31st, 2024, X^[11] user @kirawontmiss posted a joke about Turkey sending a "trained assassin," gathering over 620,000 likes in a day (seen below, left). Meanwhile, X^[12] user @Bosslogic posted fan art portraying Dikeç as a character from the Hitman video game series, gathering over 3,000 likes in an hour (seen below, right).

Yeji Kim / Yusuf Dikeç Comparisons

Shortly after South Korean sharpshooter Yeji Kim went viral online, Turkish sharpshooter Yusuf Dikeç did the same. Unlike Kim, who went viral for her headgear and high-tech gadgets, among other things, Dikeç went viral for wearing no fancy gear whatsoever and taking home the silver medal.

The viral emergence of the two sharpshooters led to a variety of art and memes pairing the two together. For example, South Korean artist and X^[13] user @luckymong1 posted art of the two on July 31st, 2024, gaining over 37,000 retweets and 295,000 likes in one day (shown below).

Memes emerged that used the two to make jokes about modern vs. outdated technology. One comparison template emerged on Reddit, and the template posted to /r/MemeTemplatesOfficial^[14] by user liminal_liminality on July 31st gained over 280 points in one day. They also posted an example use of the template (shown below, left).

On August 1st, Twitter^[15] user @retropolisart posted a comparison that gained over 16,000 retweets and 169,000 likes in a matter of hours (shown below, right).