The ‘Be like Bill’ posts were funny, but now we’ve ruined them forever

There’s a good chance that a little stick man named “Bill” has graced your feeds with his presence. But for those of you who aren’t aware of “Bill”, here’s a quick introduction. He used to be a really funny guy. He was ironic, passive-agressive, and just generally an all round, great little stick man, with exceptional social media etiquette. Note the past tense as, unfortunately, he’s no longer that guy.

Now don’t get me wrong, I was a big fan of the original Bill. The one who would just give it to us straight, and tell us that sharing memories on Facebook from 12 years ago is just downright wrong. But yet again, the internet has ruined something that was once reasonably funny – in a record time of about 48 hours.

This is mainly because of those stupid “spin off” Bills, where you can now generate your own versions, using your name and gender. There’s my first issue: it’s only your name and gender. Why do you think this is the most amazing thing to grace the internet ever? It doesn’t automatically “know” you or totally “get” you. I’m really sorry to break it you people, but it’s just pre-generated words thrown together, and it is in no way (as somebody once tragically described it) “magic”.

But that’s not even the worst part. It’s when you share your personal and exceptionally unique memes with 37 crying face emojis and “omg #accurate” captions that I just cannot stand. In all honestly, I knew you were single when you broke up with your third boyfriend of the year very publicly on Facebook, so the added “Rebecca just doesn’t care and is enjoying single life” just wasn’t all that necessary. But well done, it seems like moving on is going swimmingly.

So, something that started off as a way to subtly tell your friends to stop sending you Candy Crush invites, has now become some unstoppable “look at me, I can laugh at myself” trend. It’s a shame that even the vaguely accurate ones are just not that funny anymore.

Over it

Then there’s the final breed of internet users to come from this phase: the preachers. These people share the classic Bill memes, but then decide that an additional comment is needed, even though the beauty of Bill is that he says it all- quickly. “God I haven’t got enough hands to count how many ppl I know Instagram their food!! So annoying”. You know what else is annoying? You.

It’s time somebody stuck up for Bill, the way he has stuck up for us many a time. None of you are Bill. Please leave him alone. We should all strive to Be Like Bill: the great little stick man who never does anything wrong on social media. The first step? Stop posting your Bill memes.