How and why does the Florida Man phenomenon exist?
Florida Man by Mike Baron.
Intro: Who is Florida Man?
In April of 2023, Patrick Vandermeyden-Miller stole a $540 electric scooter from a Target in Flagler County, Florida. Minutes later, when the Flagler County police arrived, they found Vandermeyden-Miller in front of the store assembling his getaway vehicle—the scooter he had just stolen. News coverage of the thief’s half-witted escape quickly emerged on r/FloridaMan, a subreddit with over 773k followers “dedicated to the world’s worst superhero, Florida Man.”
In October of 2019, a Florida human named Cody Meader was arrested for removing a doll off store shelves at a St. Petersburg Target and “dry humping” the toy. Meader was taken into custody and admitted to doing “stupid stuff.” The toy was removed from the store, and Meader’s antics were chronicled by local news outlets and eventually disseminated on r/FloridaMan, Twitter, and other social media platforms.
Over the past decade, Florida Man has ascended from obscure internet schtick to mainstream meme, highlighting eccentric news headlines concerning the outlandish criminal exploits of Florida residents. To give readers a sense of what Florida Man is about, I took a sample of posts from the r/FloridaMan subreddit and visualized the words most commonly used in these headlines.
You’ll notice:
- Florida Man is always getting arrested, in constant conflict with law enforcement. He is a rogue vigilante, but instead of pursuing justice, Florida Man commits absurd crimes.
- Florida Man often wields a gun, alcohol, drugs, or some combination of the three.
- A significant portion of Florida Man tales involve alligators or sexually-charged situations.
Memes don’t transpire in a vacuum. Their spread is rapid, but their recognition and proliferation are often powered by long-standing cultural representations (or misrepresentations). So today, we’ll explore Florida Man’s rise, the mechanics driving the meme’s growth, and the unexpected circumstances surrounding its appeal.
Florida Man’s Origin Story
Florida Man’s roots can be traced to an unlikely origin—government transparency. Passed in 1967, Florida’s Sunshine Laws mandate that all government records, including arrest reports, be made accessible to the public, ensuring transparency in the state’s operations. As a result, all Florida arrest records are posted online, providing digital spectators with an abundance of eccentric crime reports—a gold mine of Florida Man source material.
Citizens of the internet took notice of this ready-made comedic content, spurring a rise in new stories and social media posts documenting Florida’s quirky crimes. Slowly, the meme took shape.
- In 2005, the popular internet message board FARK, a Reddit predecessor, created a “Florida” tag for its high volume of Florida-centric stories.
- On January 26, 2013, the Twitter account @_FloridaMan was created to share bizarre news headlines featuring the words “Florida Man.”
- Five days later, the subreddit r/FloridaMan was created to fulfill a similar purpose.
Over the next few years, Florida Man remained a niche internet gag, an inside joke circulating within smaller web communities, until two watershed events propelled the meme to mainstream popularity.
A March 2018 episode of FX’s Atlanta referenced the phenomenon, portraying Florida Man as a mythical alt-right psychopath perpetrating random acts of chaos. The episode was even named “Florida Man.”
Atlanta elevated Florida Man to a well-known comedic punchline, but it was 2019’s “Florida Man challenge” that would propel the meme into the zeitgeist. On March 19, 2019, Twitter user @g_pratimaaa urged followers to Google “Florida Man” in tandem with their birthday and to share their first search result.
The tweet garnered over 101,000 likes and 23,800 retweets within 48 hours. Word of the challenge quickly spread across the interwebs, its virality rivaling that of The Ice Bucket Challenge, Planking, Fidget Spinners, and Gangnam Style. When we look at r/FloridaMan subreddit membership, we see a spike in subscribership in March of 2018 following the Atlanta episode and an escalation of this trend with March 2019’s Florida Man challenge.
The growth of r/FloridaMan traces the arc and timeline of the meme’s ascension but understates the challenge’s ubiquity in early 2019. Examining Google data, we find a dramatic spike in queries in March of that year, with “Florida Man” surpassing search traffic for societal ills like “diabetes” and “climate change.”
Florida Man traffic quickly receded from its March 2019 highs following the end of the internet challenge. Yet the phenomenon would have long-standing implications for Florida’s media landscape and cultural identity. Florida Man, a digital tapestry of the state’s most misguided citizens, would change how everyday Floridians lived their lives.
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The Surprising Mechanics of the Florida Man Meme
Media publications compete in a marketplace for attention. News suppliers guess what readers want to see, and consumers reward these attempts with a few minutes of attention. Florida Man stories are the product of three distinct populations: news outlets producing articles fit for Florida Man syndication, people reading and sharing these articles, and the criminals that inspire this content.
I always assumed progressives developed and disseminated the meme to subvert Florida for its politics and perceived otherness. I presumed that the Florida Man phenomenon emerged from sociopolitical tensions in the U.S., with left-leaning media stereotyping an entire state as a form of retribution. While such beliefs might contribute to the meme’s consumption, they aren’t the main force behind its production.
When we look at stories mentioning “Florida Man,” we find the term most heavily utilized by Florida-native publications.
Initially, I found this rather confusing. Usually, regional papers don’t mention their state’s name when talking about locals. The New Hampshire Union Ledger does not refer to subjects as “New Hampshire Man,” and the Omaha World News does not chronicle “Nebraska Man.” Still, there is a chance these publications may have been referring to a “South Florida Man,” using the phrase with some sort of qualifier.
To mitigate this confounding variable, we can look at “Florida Man” mentions over time. If this term is used for typical reporting reasons, its prevalence would be consistent. When we look at Florida’s three largest newspapers, we see a sustained spike in “Florida Man” mentions around 2018 and 2019, mirroring the term’s ascension into the mainstream, followed by elevated usage in the aftermath of the internet challenge.
Said differently, these publications may have tweaked their reporting to promote sensational stories worthy of virality, adding the words “Florida Man” for search discovery purposes. Let’s say you search “Florida Man October 9.”
You see a few goofy stories published by Florida-based publications (highlighted by “Naked Florida man tries to start fight club at Chick-fil-A”) and click on one of these articles. Perhaps you stay on this page for a minute or two, reading about this mysterious Chick-fil-A fight club, enough time so that this website collects advertising revenue. Believe it or not, this frivolous search query that was inspired by a viral internet challenge just made someone money.
Florida-based news outlets may view the Florida Man phenomenon as a valuable mechanism for traffic acquisition. Some publications, like the West Palm Beach-based The Messenger, even post their stories directly on r/FloridaMan, circumventing the notion of organic virality altogether.
These publications document the humiliations of their populace for the enjoyment of readers in other states—or at least that was my initial assumption. As is a common theme with pretty much this entire analysis, my initial assumption was quite wrong. My self-righteousness was misplaced (maybe I’m out of touch).
Believe it or not, the biggest consumer of Florida Man content is, in fact, Florida. Surprisingly, Google searches for “Florida Man” and “Florida Man Meme” are highest in the Sunshine State.
At first pass, I found this extremely counterintuitive. Apparently, Florida Man spotlights bizarre news stories about Floridians produced by Florida-based media publications, and quite surprisingly, these stories are heavily consumed by Florida residents. How is this possible?
These results were perplexing. But then I remembered the first time I learned of Florida Man. I was at a Thanksgiving dinner when a Floridian at the table began explaining the meme to family and friends. She described Florida Man’s premise with great excitement and recounted some of her all-time favorite headlines. At one point, I asked her why she liked the joke if it mocked her home state. She shrugged and said, “Because it’s funny.” This was something I never considered.
People derive humor and belonging through shared identity. Embracing the Florida Man meme likely provides Floridians a sense of cultural identity, uniting the state’s residents in a shared experience of Florida’s weirdness. Perhaps Florida Man is a badge of honor—a way to celebrate all that makes the state strange and lively.
Final Thoughts: The Maryland Man Challenge
The U.S. has a handful of states whose very mention implies certain sociopolitical values. This logic often condenses America’s largest regions to negative stereotypes: Californians are out-of-touch progressives, Floridians perpetrate bizarre crimes, and Texans like talking about Texas and things being bigger in Texas.
The pandemic further calcified these state-centric cultural delineations. The media fixated on state-level data, correlating COVID case fluctuations with regional policies and political posturing from that state’s governor. It was popular to say things like “Illinois is not doing well right now” or “Can you believe Mississippi right now?” This framing—of humans as cultural extensions of arbitrary state lines—is silly. I do not walk around thinking I am a Maryland Man living with my California Girl wife and two California Cats.
That said, regional identities provide individuals with a feeling of belonging and connection, especially in a country as vast and diverse as the United States. I grew up in Maryland, a state known for crabs, Old Bay seasoning, a beer colloquially referred to as “Natty Bo,” and a memorable line of dialogue from the movie Wedding Crashers (“crabcakes and football, that’s what Maryland does”).
I often feel little connection to my home state because it’s less memorable than Texas, Florida, or California. But then I’ll see Old Bay seasoning or a shirt featuring Old Bay seasoning, and I’ll feel an inexplicable wave of joy.
America’s culture wars tend to reduce states to stereotypes, fixate on otherness, and frame these differences in adversarial terms. My initial understanding of Florida Man was born out of cynicism. I assumed there was no way Floridians would celebrate the meme and that this was yet another way for people to subvert something they didn’t agree with. I was wrong. Florida Man is not a mascot designed to humiliate Florida; it’s a mascot celebrating Florida’s quirkiness.
If someone came up with a Maryland Man meme, I’d probably find it funny. I’d read the goofy news stories and participate in the Maryland Man challenge. I’d likely joke about the meme with other Marylanders and feel more connected to my community in the process.
Crimean Ovens
“Starting in 1861, the wintertime Union field tent hospitals of the U.S. Civil War often used subterranean heating systems known as Crimean Ovens. The system under discussion was basically a firebox, or oven, on the outside of the tent, with a shallow, brick-lined, sheet-metal-covered trough running down the center of the tent’s interior, and ending in a chimney on the opposite exterior side of the tent. The tents were placed on ground with slight inclines, allowing the hot air to naturally rise and escape out the flue.”
“Dr. Charles Tripler, Surgeon and Medical Director of the Army of the Potomac, writes in a letter of November 1861 the following description of “a modification of the Crimean Oven”, devised and put into operation by Surgeon McRuer, the surgeon of General Sedgewick’s Eighth Brigade:
A trench 1 foot wide and 20 inches deep to be dug through the center and length of each tent, to be continued for 3 or 4 feet farther, terminating at one end in a covered oven fire-place and at the other in a chimney. By this arrangement the fire-place and chimney are both on the outside of the tent; the fire-place is made about 2 feet wide and arching; its area gradually lessening until it terminates in a throat at the commencement of the straight trench. This part is covered with brick or stone, laid in mortar or cement; the long trench to be covered with sheet-iron in the same manner. The opposite end to the fire-place terminates in a chimney 6 or 8 feet high; the front of the fire-place to be fitted with a tight movable sheet-iron cover, in which an opening is to be made, with a sliding cover to act as a blower.
By this contrivance a perfect draught may be obtained, and use more cold air admitted within the furnace than just sufficient to consume the wood and generate the amount of heat required, which not only radiates from the exposed surface of the iron plates, but is conducted throughout the ground floor of the tent so as to keep it both warm and dry, making a board floor entirely unnecessary, thereby avoiding the dampness and filth, which unavoidably accumulates in such places.
All noise, smoke, and dust, attendant upon building the fires within the tent are avoided; there are no currents of cold air, and the heat is so equally diffused, that no difference can be perceived between the temperature of each end or side of the tent.”
Carjackings have to be terrifying for the victims. You’re sitting there, minding your own business, when all of a sudden an armed individual shows up and steals your car out of nowhere. The sudden, terrifying nature of such an attack has got to rattle you.
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However, carjackers aren’t necessarily a particularly bright bunch. After all, it doesn’t take a master criminal to stick a gun in someone’s face and take their car. This isn’t Gone In 60 Seconds we’re talking about here.
No, it’s a violent assault on an individual with the potential for the shedding of innocent blood.
Which is why it’s absolutely hilarious when the problem sort of takes care of itself.
A carjacker died after he accidentally blasted himself in the chest while trying to smash a window with the butt of his shotgun, an inquest has heard.
Officers investigating the death of Reece Ramsey-Johnson said they were satisfied there was ‘no third party involvement’ as they closed the probe into his killing.
Witnesses who saw the 22-year-old dying from gunshot wounds in the street outside a Lloyds bank in Sydenham on Sunday, September 8, said his own gun may have gone off when he used to to hit a car window.
Opening the inquest at Southwark Coroner’s Court on Thursday September 26, Dr Andrew Harris confirmed the police investigation had now ended.
He said: ‘The investigating officer is satisfied there is no third party involvement.
Now, this was a UK carjacker and not the American variety of the breed, but it’s still the feel-good story of the day, that’s for sure.
It also suggests that British gun control laws aren’t nearly as effective as some want to claim them to be. After all, if someone like this snotnosed punk could get a shotgun, they can’t be all that hard to obtain on the black market that I’ve been assured doesn’t really exist in the UK.
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To be sure, Ramsey-Johnson got precisely what he deserved, regardless of where he was located. Such criminals should always meet such ends. At least here in the United States, we can arrange for them to meet those ends. In the UK, you have to hope and pray it’s someone of Ramsey-Johnson’s…intellect. That’s what it takes to make sure predatory jackwagons get precisely what they deserve.
Honestly, though, I’m actually a bit baffled at just how stupid you have to be to shoot yourself in the chest while trying to bust a car window. I get that they don’t have the gun culture we do, but it shouldn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that you don’t point your gun at yourself while you smash the firearm against a window. This is especially true if there’s something like a finger on the trigger.
At this point, Ramsey-Johnson’s death isn’t just a feel-good story, but a prime example of nature adding a little chlorine into the gene pool. My only hope is that this jackwagon hadn’t already reproduced and thus spread his idiocy to a whole new generation.
My message to the non-Hebrew speakers. Feel free to share.
Until Saturday I was Stav Bartel. From then and until further notice I am Chief Sergeant Stav Bartel, fighter in the IDF 7109 reserve infantry battalion.
I would like to share that since Saturday morning I am in near the front in Gaza, fighting against the barbarian invasion of Hamas. I want to bless all who genuinely strive to know the truth. Do not back down and don’t let the cynics shove irrelevant pseudo-rationales that would downplay the scale of this crime. There are numerous reports all over the media from reliable sources. These events are unfolding and Western media begin to realize them much later than needed. Do not let anyone decive you.
Lots of my friends and acquaintances had their loved ones were butchered. The enemy is cynically denying anything they themselves filmed doing. Don’t legitimize this. Hamas is evil, don’t fall into that stupid relativistic attitude, that attempts to show the “other side” of Hamas. See the true pictures from Gaza, the voice of the Gazans, but not the voice of Hamas. A group that launches an attack that massacres, butchers innocent men, women and babies, a group that burns houses with civilians trapped inside, forcing them to flee and then massacring them. My friends told me the TERRORISTS were piling bodies from the festival with a tractor and tried to burn them.
A family member of a friend of mine was raped three times. Others were abducted. An acquaintance of mine told me she hid in a bunker after the attack on the rave party, luckily left to treat the wounded, and she saw the terrorists throwing grenades into the bunkers. Her friends were injured, others killed. She carried them wounded under fire. I’ve received these testimonies already on Saturday morning. At the kibbutzim, babies were abducted, others killed, choked, and beheaded. Grandmothers were abducted, entire families were wiped out. This is not an IDF assault from air on a building used by Hamas, housing civilians as human shields. And this is no mistake. There is no way to compare. None of these people were a threat to anyone, they were not next to IDF troops. And this attack had no military objective. This is not a legitimate response to anything, not a proper way to deal with occupation or blockade. There is absolutely no way to justify any of this.
This was done by hands. This is not arresting Palestinian rioters. I’ve done it countless times during my service. Never, NEVER through my entire service have we ever treated an arrested Palestinian that way. We never beat them, never torture them. Never hurt them for fun. Quite the contrary. And if any of my soldiers mistreated them I would stop them immediately. We were always told, the IDF’s morals are the Purity of Arms, the Value of Human Life. We have been attacked so many times, we were equipped with guns and could massacre the masses, but we never did. We suffered rocks and molotov cocktails, got injured but never lost our humanity. Never tortured. I have always had a soft spot for Palestinian children, when entering their homes, I hated the idea of their fear. I often comforted them. And also during the checkpoints. Countless times we laughed with them, gave them high fives. We treated them as human.
I know the situation in for the Palestinians is not good. I know it is far from right. We are not blind to it. And more often then not I’ve regretted our governments. It is complicated. I believe they deserve to live good lives just like we do.
But Hamas are not true representatives of the Palestinians. They are a proxy of Iran, they are a lunatic, ultra-religious murderous organization. They portray themselves as the weak, freedom fighters, but in truth, they are just thugs. All of them. We are no saints, but they are the devil. While we sometimes fall in judgment, they have no morals in the first place. They celebrate death, cheer for the sight of fire and destruction and enjoy the smell of blood. They are animals and they have always been, ever since they started with the suicide bombings. And Hezbollah and the PIJ and all other TERRORIST Organizations are no different.
I woke up on Saturday with a rocket barrage on my city, Tel Aviv, in the metropolitan area of 3 million people was attacked. A rocket fell in my neighborhood, where there is no military presence, no strategic sites. Just civilians. Soon we received the reports of terrorists armed for an all out war, rampaging through cities and villages, butchering people, desecrating their bodies and burning houses. We saw the videos of thousands of people fleeing from the festival. And there are stories I’ve heard that I can’t yet process. I am unable to even think about them. So much blood and gore on the most innocent of lives.
No more than 6 hours later, I was already on my way south to arm up with hundreds of other reservists in my unit. Some of them I’ve never seen, people who did not show up to previous reserve activity for years have showed up. 300 thousand Israelis showed up.
This is the largest deployment in the country’s history. This is how eager we are to defend our homeland. And civilians are doing circle in the air just to provide us with food and equipment. Everyone joined, not a single soul in Israel remained indifferent. Jews, Drzue, Christians, Arabs, Bedouin, people who just a few seconds ago only saw their differences, have all united against evil.
There is no question here, Hamas must be eradicated, just like ISIS. And what they have done is as big a crime against Israel as it is to the Palestinians. They have done nothing but bring on death and destruction on themselves, and we haven’t started yet.
I am now near the front, thwarting continuous infiltration attempts. They try and fail. Dozens of terrorist were killed. They are getting weaker and weaker and we are getting stronger and braver. They keep shooting on civilians. Rockets are falling near us, exploding over our heads. But our spirit is strong, we are strongly united, brothers and sisters, from all over the country, religious, secular, rich, poor… And the ground is shaking below our feet front our air force pounding of the devil’s den.
While their leaders are hiding in bunkers, some of our leaders, members of the Knesset, have showed up, volunteered to join the fighting units. My battalion commander, who lives in a kibbutz just next to the strip, who was abroad at the time, has lost his 18-year-old son, and before burying or even seeing him, he decided to take a flight, show up and help in whatever he can, even though he was given the option to stay home and weep. This is the spirit of our country. And we have no other land to go to. This is our secret weapon. We have one homeland.
My Israeli friends from across the world all began organizing donations, others have bought tickets, cutting their trips by months and came back to recruit. My little cousins set up stations to collect food and supplies from civilians for the soldiers. My family is doing anything they can and so everyone else.
I have gave much thought about my grandparents who fought the Nazi attempt to eradicate them, and others who suffered persecution anywhere they’ve been. Here we are united together, we have the right and duty to help ourselves. And we will do that for eternity. We cannot be beaten, and whoever will challenge us will be destroyed.
I am no religious person, but now more than ever the words Am Yisrael Chai are inscribed on my heart.
I hope to come back as well as possible, to tell our story.