Someone had to tell you. You’re a chad now.

You started playing 1-2 wipes ago. You're still fresh enough to be considered new, but you've spent enough hours into raids to have the familiar feeling of PTSD on your sweaty palms.
You used to be a rat, a proud one. Hardly surviving pmc raids, and making do with the loot you pick up on scav runs. Sometimes getting lucky with unlooted scav bosses, or PMCs who died trying. Then one day, you realize your stash can't take anymore crap. You spend a good hour or two off-loading your stuff on the flea-market, and you think "Wow, I've spent all that time and I didn't even do a raid." You check your roubles and you've got almost 5million not great but not bad.

This is when the chad seed starts germinating.

In your stash is enough good gear to chad the whole night, so you dip your foot in and tell yourself "I'll treat myself to a chad run tonight". But you're still a rat at heart. So you compromise, you bring in good armor but it's a level 4 trooper, you bring in a kitted AK with some BP but with a little PP, and you go a little bit above penis helmit and graduate to ULACH. You take out a PMC but his friend gets the better of you, and the dangerous thought crosses your mind "I could have killed him if I just…"

The chad seed becomes a sapling.

You go back to your stash, and since you've sold all your junk, all you're looking at is chad gear from past fallen chads. Who you used to ridicule and even scorn, the exfil with shredded face shield taunting you and haunting you. You're thinking about a small rig and a hunter, but you've got some money now and you think "I can afford to do some kitted raids now, if I go below a certain point, I'll just go back to being a rat." So you gear yourself up again. This time, you put on the decent durability slick, the exfil with shredded face shield, the vss, the sordin, the ghost mask, the cool shades, the vaseline, the morphine, the nades, and you're finally bringing out that beta backpack collecting dust in your stash. Then you get contacted by hostiles, you eat a disgusting amount of bullets, but you're still standing and you somehow win the fight. You loot the bodies and it's like Santa came early; slicks, meta guns, helmets, meds, bullets that cost more than all your past rat raids combined, backpacks the size of your stash, and nades. Then it hits you, the unforgettable rush, the high that makes cocaine seem like a sugar rush, and the even stronger high when you actually extract with all of it. You're revelling and celebrating, yelling "RAT ATTACK" but you didn't even realize…

The chad sapling, has become a chad tree.
TL;DR: a lot of you still claim the title of rat, not knowing who you truly are, and what you've become.