What is Wheaton's Law?

Wheaton's Law is an internet axiom coined by actor Wil Wheaton that reads, in full, "Don't be a dick".

Where did Wheaton's Law come from?

Wheaton introduced the rule during his keynote at the Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle in August 2007, in a speech focused on sportsmanship in online gaming.

What does Wheaton's Law mean?

It is a shorthand code of conduct asking people, originally gamers and later anyone online, to treat others decently and not behave abusively.

How do you use Wheaton's Law?

People invoke it as a one-line reply to bad behavior online, often linking the name as if citing a formal rule, as parodied by sites like RuleOfTheInternet.com.

Is Wheaton's Law still popular?

The phrase stayed in heavy circulation through the late 2000s and early 2010s and is still cited as a classic rule of internet conduct, with later variants like Bill Willingham's "okay to play one on TV" amendment.

Wheaton's Law

2007catchphraseclassic

Published October 5, 2026

Wheaton's Law is a three-word rule for the internet, "Don't be a dick," coined by actor Wil Wheaton during his August 2007 keynote at the Penny Arcade Expo. What began as a plea for better online gaming sportsmanship spread through geek-culture blogs and single-serving sites to become one of the most quoted etiquette axioms of the Web 2.0 era.

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Overview

The law gets quoted as a one-line verdict on bad behavior, usually dropped into a forum reply, a Twitter dunk, or a mod note when a longer argument would be wasted. The joke works because the rule is almost comically short next to the famous Three Laws of Robotics or Murphy's Law, with the eponymic framing letting people pretend an actor's offhand remark deserves the same formal treatment1.

Early use skewed hard toward video game communities and geek blogs, where "Don't be a dick" doubled as sportsmanship advice for Xbox Live and WoW and as a general-purpose shorthand against griefing, trolling, and bad-faith argument2. The phrase itself was not new in 2007. A Slashdot moderation guideline had already told users "as the bumper sticker says, 'Don't be a dick'" years earlier3, but Wheaton's keynote attached the rule to a specific person and gave it a memorable name that outlasted the speech.

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Origin & Background

Platform

Penny Arcade Expo keynote / blogs (viral spread)

Creator

Wil Wheaton

Date

2007

Wil Wheaton coined the rule during his keynote address at the Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle in August 2007. Ars Technica's live writeup of the event described Wheaton walking the crowd through his history as a gamer, contrasting the arcade era with current Xbox Live and World of Warcraft culture, and asking the audience to treat other players better1. Joystiq's recap of the same keynote framed it as a speech "just for geeks" and amplified the three-word takeaway to a wider gaming audience within days2.

Wheaton restated the rule in his own PAX recap on his blog on August 22, 2007, which is the written source most later writers point to when they quote him4. A fan-recorded clip of the keynote was later posted to YouTube as the standard reference video for the moment the rule was announced5.

How It Spread

The axiom moved quickly out of gaming press and onto single-serving joke sites and social platforms. On February 9, 2009, the site RuleOfTheInternet.com launched with nothing on the page except the words "DON'T BE A DICK" in large text, treating Wheaton's line as the one and only rule of the web6.

Comic writer Bill Willingham posted a widely circulated amendment on Twitter on November 22, 2009, proposing a "revised standard version" that read "Don't be a dick, but it's okay to play one on TV"7. A dedicated Facebook page for Wheaton's Law went up on December 1, 2009, and the first Urban Dictionary entry for "Wheaton's Rule" followed on December 31, with a separate "Wheaton's Law" definition added June 7, 20101. YouTuber 8O8X posted a stick figure animation on April 28, 2011 built around the companion line "don't be a dick about the things you don't like," which recirculated the rule to a younger audience8.

By February 2012 the line had crossed over far enough that Wired's GeekMom column ran a piece about trying to explain Wheaton's Law, and Wil Wheaton himself, to the parents of a child's classmates1. KYM also noted that English search results for "Wheaton's Law" climbed from roughly 96 hits in 2008 to more than 2,250 by 2011 as the eponym caught on alongside the older bare phrase1.

Timeline