Seeking Bill: Who is this stick-figure and why is he clogging up our Facebook timelines?

All of a sudden the “Be Like Bill” meme is clogging up Facebook timelines with tongue-in-cheek etiquette. Bill is too polite to tell you not to do something so he leads by example. In Arabic, he’s Bilal and in Spain he is Jose. In the Western World he teaches his friends the proper ways of navigating Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, whereas in Palestine it’s Bilal being used to teach Internet-savvy Palestinians not to stab people to death.

He’s a no-frills stick figure who laughs in the face of chain e-mails and doesn’t spam his friends or give spoilers. The punchline is always the same, “This is Bill. Bill does …. Be like Bill.”

Bill may seem like something new but he first popped up about a year ago. It was only once Italian Eugenie Croitoru started Bill’s Facebook page that over 1.5 million people started liking and sharing the simplistic material.

Others find Bill self-righteous and passive-aggressive and began a “Don’t be like Bill” page.

Or you can Be You and find your own stick-figured personality-based profile at Blobla.com