Have your friends, for some unknown reason, started telling you to be more like them? If you’ve checked your Facebook feed in the past 24 hours, then you were most likely inundated with your friends posting “Be Like (insert their name here)” notifications alongside a drawing of a stick figure. But, just what the hell are these posts about, and why has this meme suddenly taken over Facebook?
The posts are based on a meme called “Be Like Bill,” a fictional character created last year by a Moldovian programmer, Eugeniu Croitoru. Along with his colleague, Debabrata Nath, Croitoru made a series of cartoons that show Bill engaging in various activities and abstaining from others. However, as the BBC points out, Bill is “far too polite to tell you straight out not to do something. Instead he leads by example. But the message is clear and often very funny.” Clearly, the meme is a passive-aggressive commentary on the smug, “look at how cool I am” nature of social media posts.
Posted by Be like Bill on Sunday, January 24, 2016
“The idea is very simple,” Croitoru tells the BBC. “’Bill’ can be anyone who is smart and has common sense and doesn’t do annoying things. You’ll also notice Bill can be someone who makes fun of himself and jokes about others too occasionally.”
The meme took off, and the “Be Like Bill” Facebook page already has 1.25 million likes. But why is it suddenly taking off again? According to TechCrunch’s Sarah Buhr, it’s because of a meme generator that lets you replace Bill’s name with yours. And during the past weekend, enough people have posted their personal versions of “Be Like Bill” that it’s creating a backlash among Facebook users and the media.
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Queensland Police are searching for a man with a very slight build, dark hat and no nose who has been repeatedly disturbing people’s timelines. He answers to the name Bill.
Posted by Queensland Police Service on Sunday, January 24, 2016
It’s so annoying that even the Queensland Police Service in Australia has issued a wanted ad on its Facebook page, looking for Bill. It seems Bill has become a butt of its jokes. Although the cartoons were created as a response to all the annoying posts people make on social media, Bill’s sayings actually come off as smug, too.
Croitoru doesn’t mind the parodies or criticism, however. “I’m not annoyed. All I can say is that I made the idea popular with the intention of making something positive. Something that makes people laugh. It’s not meant to be about politics,” he tells the BBC.
If you want to be like Bill, you, too, can passive aggressively post a meme on your Facebook with the generator found on this website.
You just opened X and started typing your thoughts. Imagine the jump scare when a hand suddenly pops up on your screen, pointing at the promote button. It doesn’t say a word and simply points. For a growing number of X users, this isn’t a made-up scenario but something they have been seeing since yesterday, and very few of them are amused.
Most of us have learned to tune out the usual in-app upsells, whether it’s a glowing upgrade banner or a pop-up about a premium plan. A floating hand hovering over your draft is much harder to ignore, and that’s probably the whole point.
Scroll through any app for five minutes, and you’ll find someone maxxing something. Their skin, their sleep, their protein intake, even their Friday night on the couch. That little suffix has been everywhere this year, and now it has a trophy to show for it. In a recent announcement, Dictionary.com named maxxing its 2026 Word of the Year.
What are people actually doing when they’re maxxing?
Instagram is testing a new format for long-form videos called Features. It allows select creators to upload horizontal videos running up to 90 minutes long. Instagram has already tested the new format with creators in Brazil, and now, it's expanding to tens of thousands of creators across the US.
How will Instagram's new Features format work?