About

"I Have a Better Idea", also known as Bill and Phil, is a captioned stock photo series in which two people discuss coining a new term, which typically includes a name pun joke followed by the sentence "I have a better idea."

Origin

On April 6th, 2015, the @InternetHippo^[8] Twitter feed posted a mock dialogue in which a man named Phil proposes they call a giant advertising board a "philboard," followed by a man named Bill saying "I have a better idea" (shown below). Within two years, the tweet gained over 20,000 likes and 12,000 retweets.

On August 18th, 2016, a stock photograph of two men captioned with the mock dialogue was submitted to /r/youdontsurf,^[1] garnering 13,500 votes (91% upvoted) and 100 comments over the next five months (shown below).

Spread

On September 17th, 2016, the /r/BillAndPhil^[2] subreddit was launched for the captioned stock photos. On September 19th, /r/BillAndPhil^[4] user Danchekker posted a captioned version of the School of Athens painting, featuring a name pun based on the word "philosophy" (shown below, left). On September 24th, Redditor buttwarmers posted a stock photo of two women joking about curing depression with genocide and suicide (shown below, right).^[6]

On November 21st, Redditor doowi1 posted a stock photo of two men named Bill and Buil, who discuss what to call a building (shown below, left). On December 5th, Redditor cheesinator posted a stock photo of two men in lab coats named Robert and Ethan, in which they coin the name for ethanol (shown below, right).^[5]

On December 12th, the original "philboard" image macro was reposted on Break,^[3] where it gained over 277,000 views in two months. On January 25th, Redditor Eloykwik referred to the series as "Robert/Ethan memes," claiming they were seeing a "dramatic drop" on /r/memeeconomy.^[9]

Various Examples

Search Interest

Not available.

External References