The Florida Man Phenomenon: A Note

In the past decade "Florida Man" became a popular Internet meme, derived from just how often news stories detailing comically bizarre incidents perpetrated by individuals who were likely intoxicated or mentally ill begin with the words "A Florida man."

All of this, of course, has had some asking why so many incidents of these types seem to occur in the state. Some have suggested the state's demographic "diversity," others its extreme weather (its seemingly having the "dog days of summer" nearly all year round).

However, the mundane reality is that it is easy to come up with numerous explanations which have nothing to do with any special eccentricity on the part of the state and its inhabitants.

The sheer populousness of the state would quite naturally mean a disproportionate share of eccentricity. With about 22 million inhabitants circa 2023 one would, all other things being equal, expect forty times as many such incidents as would come from, for example, Wyoming--with the fact all the more worth remarking given that the only two states in the Union larger than Florida in population have a pretty strong reputation for eccentricity themselves, namely California and Texas.

Urbanization may matter too--Florida being not just heavily peopled, but highly urbanized. (With over 91 percent of its people living in cities as of 2010, it is perhaps the seventh most urbanized state in the country.) One might add that it is particularly rich in large, high-profile urban areas (the Miami-Fort Lauderdale area, Jacksonville, Tampa-Saint Petersburg, Orlando) where not only are local events likely to get national notice, but which sprawl to such a degree as to make it essentially one giant "megalopolis"--containing 17 million+ of its 22 million people, giving the megalopolis a population larger than is to be seen in any other whole state but California, Texas and New York.

That makes it that much easier for any odd incidents occurring within it (of which, again, there would likely be many given the sheer number of people present) to come to public notice (again, as compared with what may happen in a thinly peopled rural area).

One might add that where comparisons with other states are concerned it may matter that California and Texas are associated with older stereotypes that let news audiences (quite wrongly, though they did it all the same) fit a good many of their incidents into a familiar framework (California's counterculturalism, for example, or Texas' nationalism and ultra-conservatism).

By contrast Florida, long associated simply with retirees and "fun in the sun" has had nothing of the kind, leaving it susceptible to the identification of all this with a vaguer "Floridaness"--which has in itself been powerfully self-reinforcing, with new incidents fit into the increasingly familiar pattern, the more in as the words "a Florida man" became a reliable way of grabbing the attention of the sorts of readers and viewers who eat this kind of thing up.