I realize this is a nerdy journalism thing, but I’ve been having a lot of fun watching the online responses to the challenge of Googling “Florida Man” and your birth date to come up with the story of your life.
Journalists have long made jokes about the ubiquitous presence of “local man.” Used in headlines across the country, Local Man and Local Woman manage to get themselves in more trouble than any one individual could or should be able to handle.
We’ve joked about Local Man’s apparently endless supply of cash that allows him to freely travel the country and how we think he would begin to learn from his mistakes.
While Local Man makes headlines in every little berg and hamlet across this expansive country, his antics always seem to ramp up in states like Texas and Florida, where his activities seem to be a little more creative than those in most other states.
So I laughed when Florida journalists recently felt the need to straighten the record regarding a man who had himself filmed as he baited and attacked a pelican while vacationing in Florida. Original headlines apparently referred to “Florida Man,” but as it turned out, the culprit was actually from Maryland.
Social media posts immediately decried the identification of the pelican-attacking man as a Florida resident and made sure the world knew the man hailed from the Free State.
With a lot of the nation’s media focus on Maryland, Florida and the now widely hated man, a social media challenge was issued encouraging the Google search of Florida Man along with your birthday and the challenge went viral.
The results were hysterical.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis Googled his Sept. 14 birthday to find “Shirtless Florida man is back to take Hurricane Florence because the Internet made it so.”
Meh.
It apparently doesn’t take much to de-escalate a police situation involving Florida man, as evidenced by the headline of “Slice of pizza convinced Gulf Breeze man to end police standoff.”
But some Florida residents will put themselves at peril trying to escape police, as proven by “Florida man jumps in canal of toxic blue-green algae fleeing a traffic stop, say police.”
Florida Man has been accused of exposing himself to an exotic dancer, putting semen in a coworker’s water, and hitting his pregnant girlfriend with a bag of tortilla chips during an argument over the unborn baby’s paternity.
The ambitious guy has fought huge pythons, been attacked by a bear, and won a $451 million Mega Millions jackpot. He’s a busy, sometimes brave, sometimes belligerent but always entertaining sort of guy.
The Florida Man challenge took on a life of its own and became the subject of many newspaper articles explaining the popularity of the task and printing some of the results. Many reporters took to creating lists of the top headlines involving Florida Man, knowing that editors like writers to stay on top of trends and create “clickable” articles.
An online search of the challenge brings up a huge lists of articles, as well as the occasional advice to not participate in searches that reveal personal information like your birth date.
To give equal opportunity, I discovered a headline about the Florida woman who thought she had food poisoning after eating bad Chinese food and ended up giving birth to a healthy, full-term baby that she supposedly didn’t know she was carrying. The Pensacola News Journal ran the story under the headline of “Pensacola woman mistakes 37-week pregnancy for bad Chinese food.”
My birthday search brought up several wild and crazy Florida Man headlines, including “Florida man says he only grabbed his mother by head to kiss her,” from the Brevard Times; “Florida man stood in fire chanting gibberish,” from the Bradenton Herald; and “Teens who laughed and recorded a drowning man in his final moments won’t face charges,” from CNN.
But my favorite headline I found in my search was “Florida man wasn’t drinking while driving, just at stop signs.” Those born on July 12 can claim it for themselves.
Please feel free to share your results if you have taken (or now will take) the Florida man challenge.
Have fun!
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