Florida Man:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_Man
Origin
The meme was originated in February 2013 by the Twitter feed @_FloridaMan, which quoted news headlines containing the words Florida man, such as "Florida man run over by van after dog pushes accelerator" or "Police arrest Florida man for drunken joy ride on motorized scooter at Wal-Mart." The feed refers to Florida Man as the "World's Worst Superhero."
Spread
Florida already had a colorful reputation on the Internet, with the social aggregation site Fark having had a Florida tag for years before the Florida Man Twitter feed appeared.[4] After the creation of the Twitter feed in January 2013, and its simultaneous popularization on social media sites such as Reddit and Tumblr (initially through the subreddit r/FloridaMan and the Tumblr blog StuckInABucket), the meme was featured in numerous news articles and stories throughout February 2013.
Florida Man was also referred to in the opening episode of Season 2 of the FX show Atlanta as a sinister entity, referred to by Darius as an “Alt-right Johnny Appleseed,” who commits a variety of strange crimes in Florida as part of a plot to keep black voters out, portrayed by Kevin Waterman.
On November 1, 2018, Desi Lydic of The Daily Show filed a report comedically investigating the phenomenon of "Florida Man".
A play titled "Florida Man" by Michael Presley Bobbitt premiered July 31, 2019, at New York's Theatre Row Studios.
In 2019, a variation developed on social media in which people were encouraged to look up "Florida Man" and the date of their birthday, typically finding some bizarre occurrence involving a Florida Man on that date.
On October 31, 2019, president Donald Trump according to sources, was changing his residence from New York City to Palm Beach, Florida, which is the location of the Mar-a-Lago resort he owns and frequently visits. Sources joked about the POTUS becoming Florida Man, including The Daily Show, which released an extension for Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox that changes all instances of Trump's name to "Florida Man." On October 24, 2020, during his rally for presidential candidate Joe Biden in Florida, Barack Obama mocked Trump, saying, "'Florida Man' wouldn't even do this stuff." referring to his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, domestic and foreign affairs.
American classic rock band Blue Öyster Cult referenced the phenomenon in the song "Florida Man" on their 2020 album The Symbol Remains.
Reception
The meme has widely been seen as a confirmation of the association between Florida and bizarre or humorous activity, and it has been compared to the Darwin Awards. There has been backlash to the meme, with the Columbia Journalism Review calling it "one of journalism’s darkest and most lucrative cottage industries" where "stories tend to stand as exemplars of the mythical hyper-weirdness of the Sunshine State, but more often simply document the travails of the drug-addicted, mentally ill, and homeless."
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