Perhaps Mt. Vesuvius wasn't the only thing that erupted in Pompeii on that fateful day in 79 CE.

On July 1st, a photograph of a preserved Pompeii man who appears to be holding his junk hit Twitter and the jokes have been flying ever since.

Masturbating man, Pompeii, 79 CE pic.twitter.com/EPA2b17Vmd — Persian Rose (@PersianRose1) July 2, 2017

At the surface, this reads like a textbook case of sensational, and equally inspirational, tales of ancient history that the Internet has been waiting for for millennia: In the face of a catastrophe that would go down in history as one of the deadliest volcanic eruptions ever, one man (nearly literally) pissed in the wind as scorching lava encroached upon his home. As stories about archaeologists' excavating skeletons of apparent loved ones huddled together to their last breaths pulled at the heartstrings of your aunts and uncles on Facebook, tens of thousands of shitposters on Twitter became fixated with the story of one Pompeii man who was pulling at his dick for one last time as he laid dying. Tfw no gf, it knows not the boundaries of time.

Alas, the legend of Pompeii's last man fapping is too good to be true. In an e-mail correspondence with The Daily Dot, Italian volcanologist Pier Paolo Petrone (a.k.a Captain Killjoy) explained what is really happening in the photo:

"The individual in the photo is an adult man, killed by the hot pyroclastic surge (hot gas and ash cloud which killed most of the population living around Mount Vesuvius), with both arms and legs flexed due to the heat… most of the human victims found in Pompeii often show ‘strange’ position of arms and legs, due to the contraction of limbs as a consequence of the heat effect on their bodies after death occurred."

So the Pompeii Masturbator actually died a horrible death, according to Petrone. As hot lava and the extreme heat began to take over his life, his limbs were bent and shrunken into the masturbatory position we now see today.

Still, the legend of the Fapping Pompeiian will likely serve as an inspiration for the many of those who know that feel. May we all be so bold as to put our hands to our junks and give a mighty “f*** you” to the heavens in the face of death, just like that classic tall-tale told by Brodie (Jason Lee) in Kevin Smith's 1995 comedy film Mallrats.