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Be like Bill is a social media meme that began around late 2015, with its popularity greatly increasing in early 2016.
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Meme
The Be like Bill meme typically features an image of a simple stick figure, who may be wearing a knitted hat, together with text such as "Bill is on Facebook. Bill is a vegan. Bill doesn't tell everybody about it. Bill is smart. Be like Bill." The meme has been described as "a way for people to passive-aggressively call out social media behaviours that annoy them." The meme also attracted a large number of detractors who criticized the meme's tone and lack of self-awareness.
Be like Bill has a Facebook page and as of 25 January 2016 the page had over 1.5 million "likes".
Boston officials used the meme to discourage the use of space savers in parking spots. The Queensland Police Service wrote a joke Facebook update stating that they were pursuing Bill for "repeatedly disturbing people’s timelines".
Variants
The meme has spawned foreign versions, including Bilal in Arabic, Rashid in Malaysia, Jose in Spanish and Петя (Petya) in Russian. A culturally-specific Afghani version is called Be like Qodos, written in Dari and Pashto. The Filipino version is called Tularan si Juan, written in Tagalog.
There is a Sri Lankan version සිරිමත්(Sirimat) which was soon changed to සිරිපාල(Siripaala) weeks before the 2015 presidential election. There is a very old Sinhalese poem taught in schools about a fictional boy named Sirimat praising his daily way of life, such as planning the next day before going to sleep and waking up in early morning.
A female variant, Be like Emily, also exists.