Florida Man

Origin

"Florida Man" began with the Twitter account @_FloridaMan, launched on January 26, 2013. The feed posted nothing but American local-news headlines beginning with "Florida man," and passed 64,000 followers within a month (Know Your Meme entry).

There is an institutional reason it is Florida specifically. The state's Sunshine Act grants broad access to public records, including arrest reports. Journalists can request police reports and departments readily supply them by email or web posting, so bizarre incidents that would never have been written up in another state become headlines in Florida. It is less that Floridians are strange than that Florida's strangeness is unusually well documented.

Spread

It moved fast. On January 30, 2013 a Reddit post titled "Florida Man is a terrible superhero" took off, and the next day, January 31, the subreddit r/FloridaMan was created. On February 8, Slate reported that the account's profile picture was actually the mugshot of an Indiana resident, and on February 14 NPR ran a segment on the phenomenon. In barely a month it went from an internet joke to something the press covered.

Variations

The most widespread spinoff is the March 2019 "Florida Man Birthday Challenge": you search "Florida man" plus your own birthday and find whatever bizarre headline came out that day. Tumblr user gandalfsoda proposed it on March 12, 2019, and a March 19 tweet by @g_pratimaaa drew over 101,000 likes within 48 hours. The rule of the game is to read the resulting headline as the destiny of anyone born that day.

Usage

As the standard phrase when sharing an absurd news story
Describing someone's eccentric behavior as "practically Florida Man"
As a self-introduction or meme game in the birthday-challenge format
To enjoy the contrast between the dry style of local news and its ridiculous content