Naked Florida Man Shot and Killed by Passing Motorist After Having His Clothes Stolen

[Ian David]

26. Why does Florida produce so much weird news? Our experts explain.

Why does Florida produce so much weird news? Our experts explain.

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See, that’s the thing about Florida. It’s not that we have a lock on all the weirdness. Human nature guarantees that weird things can happen anywhere. What sets Florida apart is that it produces more weird news than anywhere else, and our weird news tends to be weirder than anyone else's. No other state is going to have a guy who faked a python rescue. No sir.

That’s why, in 2001, administrators for the snarky website Fark.com approved a tag for news items from Florida, the only state so honored. “Other states have odd stories come out of them, but no state can challenge Florida,” a Fark.com administrator said in 2011. “It’s the heavyweight champion of weirdness.”

How did Florida become the Go-To State for Weird? I consulted a number of experts, including historian Gary Mormino, author of Land of Sunshine, State of Dreams. Some folks think the rise of weirdness in Florida started with the 2000 presidential election, which guaranteed no parent would ever again name a newborn boy Chad. But Mormino contends it began long before that, as far back as the 1920s when unscrupulous hucksters were pulling wacky stunts to sell swampland to Yankees. The national news first began noticing this aspect of Florida in the 1980s, when cocaine cowboys were tearing up South Florida and Time magazine’s cover asked if the state was “Paradise Lost?” Now we’ve got all the aggregators jumping on the Florida weird-news bandwagon, collecting clicks with our craziness. How does Florida maintain this constant flow of cuckoo? A few factors combine to help explain it:

More:
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/florida/features/2013/oh_florida/what_makes_florida_weird_weather_people_tourists_foliage_greed.html