Viral challenge “Florida man”, what it consists of and what is its relationship with people's birthdays

When you type in the search engine “Florida man” (man in Florida) and any date, you will see that news headlines appear with that phrase. This is part of a viral challenge that emerged in 2013 and continues to date: network users search for the words mentioned, any date, such as their birthdays and then share screenshots of screens with news related to this topic.

This challenge, which became especially well known in the United States, began to circulate around the world in recent years and it recovers its peaks in popularity from time to time. The stories that are shared attract attention for various reasons: firstly, that there are so many headlines that start with the same phrase; and secondly, that they are often reports of unusual events.

Some of the stories that have gone viral the most over the years with the aforementioned headline:

June 11, 2012: Florida man arrested for calling 911 after his kitten was denied entry to a strip club.

June 8, 2017: A Florida man desperate to go to Hooters calls 911.

April 27, 2018: A Florida man “practices karate” with swans in the park.

January 4, 2019: A Florida man punched his dad in the face with a pizza after learning that he helped in his birth.

June 11, 2020: A man from Florida fights an alligator who attacked his dog.

July 20, 2020: A Florida man tries to evade arrest by walking away from the police.

What is the reason why there are so many atypical reports in that region? Different theories come into play here. The first one says that there are not necessarily more strange episodes occurring in that state, but that there is more information available about them.

It happens that Florida's public records laws, also known as Sunshine Laws, make it easier for journalists to obtain reports of police incidents and generate stories that attract the attention of readers.

The aforementioned laws allow journalists to easily enter a public record request and thus obtain information about different police incidents that are material for their articles.

Another theory highlights the fact that Florida is a large state, with a large number of inhabitants, which makes incidents more likely due to a matter of number. In addition to this, as we have a humid and hot climate, people spend more time outside their homes and therefore there is a greater chance that different events will occur in public spheres, or contexts in which they are easily exposed.

There is also the factor of mental health. This is what Al Tompkins, a senior faculty member at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, in St. Petersburg, Florida, in an article published in 2019 by CNN.

Florida has low funding dedicated to mental health. “It would be a mistake to think that Florida has a crazy crime rate; our violent crime rate is actually decreasing,” he said. He added: “What is very high, however, is the mental health epidemic.”

He also pointed out that beyond the laughs that these headlines can generate, it is important to analyze whether there is a bigger problem to attend to. In some cases, incidents may involve people who need help to deal with an adverse mental health situation, the expert stressed in that article.

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