Be Like Bill: a rare breath of fresh air

I’m usually first in line to blast whatever social media trend happens to be flooding the internet any given week, but this time I just can’t. It’s too funny. It already came and went, never to be seen again. It quickly spawned an avalanche of ridiculous columns criticizing its “dangerous” message, unintentionally heightening the hilarity.

I love Bill so freaking much.

For those of you who managed to avoid Facebook this past weekend, here’s what you missed. Bill is a stick figure. He looks like the type of fellow you used to draw in Microsoft Paint on your Windows 98 desktop computer. In the original cartoon, Bill sees something on the internet that offends him and moves on, because Bill is smart. The last line of the simplistic message encourages others to be like Bill.

I had to specify original cartoon because some genius — and I mean that quite literally — designed a “Be Like Bill” generator, through which users could submit their own names and receive similarly sensible advice at random.

To the haters, a group I gladly associate myself with 90 percent of the time, it was the latest annoying trend to target with baseless criticism.

Personally, I couldn’t get enough of it.

Bill was completely maddening to those taking him too seriously. Some people labeled the meme as annoyingly passive aggressive, while more than a few social justice warriors took it to the extreme and decided it was intolerant. Maybe that’s why I enjoyed it so much — the idea of a poorly-drawn stick figure meme getting under the skin of oversensitive types looking for a reason to be offended at something on the internet was just delicious.

Because that was the whole point, really. The cartoon places value on an increasingly rare attribute — the ability to let potentially offensive material go. Being easily offended has somehow become a popular, even desirable trait for many. There are those who truly pride themselves at how effective they’ve become at framing innocuous things as harmful.

Bill serves as an adorable reminder of how backwards that is.

At this point, Bill has transcended life as a simple meme or fad and effectively become a political cartoon. One that makes people laugh but also think, and either enraged or entertained all who took part in the weekend of “Be Like Bill.”

— Logan Jones is a journalism major. He isn’t sure how that’s going to help him pay off his student loans after graduation. Logan is not smart. Don’t be like Logan. Contact at Logantjones@aggiemail.usu.edu or on twitter @Logantj.