Topline
The “Florida Man Games” is a new competition coming to Florida in February based around finding the best real-life examples of the “Florida Man” meme, a decade-old joke first started by the now-defunct Florida Man X account centered around the bizarre news stories based in the state.
Key Facts
The Florida Man meme has been circulating through popular culture since around 2013, and has been featured in shows and books like a limited Netflix series of the same name, an X-Files comic book and FX’s Atlanta.
Pete Melfi, organizer of the competition and owner of Florida digital news outlet The 904 Now, told the Orlando Sentinel the event was initially supposed to be a “0.5K Beer Run,” but as he began adding more games, it turned into a tournament.
Presented by Ripley’s Believe It or Not, the Florida Man Games will take place on February 24, in St. Augustine, Florida, near Jacksonville, with tickets ranging from $45 to $145.
Teams of five will compete in contests including beer belly sumo wrestling, a pool noodle mud fight, a “category 5 cash grab,” where contestants inside a wind machine grab money within a limited amount of time, and an obstacle course where competitors evade arrest from real police officers.
After submitting a video about why they should be chosen, only 16 teams will be selected to participate in the main events, though separate games will be available for other event-goers to participate in, like a mechanical gator and an obstacle course.
Former American Gladiators Dan “Nitro” Clark and Lori “Ice” Fetrick are slated to serve as judges over the competition, according to the event’s website.
Key Background
Stories like a Florida man stealing an alligator and throwing it off a roof or another pulling a gun on a Starbucks worker—who happened to be the local police chief’s daughter—are among the eye-grabbing articles that have contributed to the Florida man ideation. The trend became so popular that a website was created in 2021 after the Florida Man Birthday Challenge gained popularity. The website is dedicated to finding the craziest Florida Man news stories that took place on the birthdays of people visiting the website. The Florida Man phenomenon is connected to Florida’s reputation as the “punchline state,” which notably includes the 2000 presidential election recount, a weeks-long ballot battle that determined the outcome of the Electoral College, prompting people to think “maybe the folks in Florida are not as bright” as they thought, Craig Pittman, a former Tampa Bay Times reporter and author, told the Guardian. Late-night show the Daily Show hypothesized the reason news outlets are able to write such bizarre stories on Florida is because of Florida’s Public Records Laws. Florida has the most extensive open records laws in the country, which allows the public to access police reports, according to law firm Rumberger and Kirk. Although a lot of journalists find Florida Man stories because of Florida’s Public Records Laws, this theory doesn’t explain why the meme became so popular, according to a 2021 analysis by the American University Washington College of Law. Instead, the American University paper attributes Florida Man’s success to the state’s reputation of being a “newsworthy state,” and the internet’s culture of resharing content, thus prompting journalists to continue writing stories on the topic.
Florida Man News Stories
Here are a few examples of outlandish Florida Man news stories:
- February 9, 2016: A 24-year-man was arrested around four months after throwing a 3.5-foot alligator he found on the side of a road through the window of a Wendy’s drive-thru. The man was charged with assault with a deadly weapon without intent to kill, illegally possessing an alligator and petty theft.
- May 14, 2019: A Florida man was arrested after police reportedly found him playing basketball in the nude. He told police he believed playing naked “enhances” his skill level.
- January 7, 2020: A Florida man accused of extorting a car dealership posed as the prosecutor of his own case and attempted to drop charges against himself. After authorities investigated the case, they charged him with seven additional charges, including falsely impersonating a prosecutor and practicing law with authority.
- December 10, 2021: A man in Gainesville was arrested after spraying a flamethrower at his neighbor’s car with three teenagers inside, because police said he was angry with their parking habits. Although no one was injured, the mother of the teens said the man frequently used the flamethrower to scare guests at her home.
- July 27, 2022: A man was arrested in Brevard County after stealing a car to access a U.S. Space Force base. The man claimed the president told him to warn government officials at the base about U.S. aliens fighting Chinese dragons.
- October 17, 2023: When central Florida police officers arrived at the house of a suspect named Johnny Yates, who was wanted for aggravated battery, they were met with a whiteboard on the front porch that read “Johnny Yates does NOT live here!” After a person leaving the house told police Yates was inside, they used smoke to lure him out, but they ultimately had to use K9 dogs to find Yates hiding in a “modified chest of drawers.”
Tangent
The New York Post used the Florida Man meme to take shots at former President Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign announcement, making the headline of the story “Florida Man Makes Announcement.” The New York Post is owned by media mogul Rupert Murdoch, whose news outlets reportedly stopped showing Trump in favorable light after he failed to concede the 2020 election.
Read the full article here
