About

Perplexed Bill Nye is a photoshop meme featuring a cutout image of Bill Nye walking down a street while holding a cigarette, which is often photoshopped on to various action film and television posters.

Origin

On October 17th, 2015, National Geographic^[1] published a photograph of Bill Nye, taken by photographer Chris Cassel, walking down the middle of a road while smoking a cigarette (shown below). The picture was meant to illustrate Nye’s feelings of despair when confronted with evidence about climate change.

Spread

On November 4th, Redditor avemae10 posted the photograph to the /r/pics^[2] subreddit, where it gained over 5,000 votes (90% upvotes) and 1,200 comments in five days. The same day, Redditor Chipper_chap submitted the picture in a post titled "Perplexed Bill Nye" to the /r/photoshopbattles^[3] subreddit, where several users posted photoshopped images of Nye in scenes from various films and television shows (shown below).

On November 5th, a compilation of images from the /r/photoshopbattles submitted to 9gag,^[4] where it gathered upwards of 11,800 points and 230 comments. The following day, UpRoxx^[5] published an article about the Bill Nye photoshops. The same day, Redditor phc_me submitted a post asking about the Bill Nye photoshopped movie posters to the /r/OutOfTheLoop^[7] subreddit.

Various Examples

Search Interest

Not available.

External References