About
Florida Man is a Twitter feed that curates news headline descriptions of bizarre domestic incidents involving a male subject residing in the state of Florida. The tweets are meant to be humorously read as if they were perpetrated by a single individual dubbed “the world’s worst superhero.”
Origin
The @_FloridaMan Twitter feed was launched on January 26th, 2013, which featured news headlines containing the keywords “Florida man.” Within one month, the account received over 64,000 followers.
Florida Man Arrested After Pocket-Dialing 911 | foxnews.com/us/2013/01/31/…
— Florida Man (@_FloridaMan) February 2, 2013
Spread
On January 30th, 2013, Redditor Deus_Ex_Corde submitted a post titled “Florida Man is a terrible superhero”[4] featuring a screenshot of Google News search results for news stories containing the keywords “Florida Man.” (shown below). Within one month, the post received over 22,700 up votes and 360 comments.
On January 31st, the /r/FloridaMan[3] subreddit was created with links to news articles containing the words “Florida Man” in the title. The same day, the Tumblr blog StuckInABucket[5] published a list of notable “Florida Man” news headlines, which accumulated more than 200 notes in the next month. On February 8th, Slate[9] published an article noting that the @_FloridaMan profile avatar was a mug shot of Indiana resident Ricky Lee Kalichun, who was arrested in January of 2011 after covering his face in black marker and attacking his neighbor with a sword.[10] In the next several days, compilations of notable tweets from the Twitter account were featured on several Internet news and tech blogs, including The Daily Dot,[8] Laughing Squid,[11]Gawker,[12] Mashable[13] and BuzzFeed.[14] On February 14th, NPR[15] broadcast a news segment on “All Things Considered,” featuring audio clips of reporters reading headlines containing “Florida man.”
Fan Art
Several fan art illustrations dedicated to the fictitious superhero have surfaced on the microblogging site Tumblr under the tag “#florida man.”[16]
Twitter Feed
Search Interest
External References
[1]twitter – Florida Man
[2]tumblr – tagged: Florida Man
[3]reddit – /r/FloridaMan
[4]Reddit – Florida Man is a terrible superhero
[5]Tumblr – Stuckinabucket
[6]Pleated Jeans – Florida Man Twitter
[7]BuzzFeed – 10 Reasons Florida Man is the Best Twitter Aggregator
[8]Daily Dot – Florida Man is Pretty Much the Worst Person Ever
[9]Slate – Follow Friday = Florida Man the Worlds Worst Superhero
[10]CBS News – Ricky Lee Kalichun
[11]Laughing Squid – Twitter Feed for Florida Man
[12]Gawker – Florida Man Personifies Everything Thats Messed up in Florida
[13]Mashable – Florida Man is Twitters Worst Superhero
[14]BuzzFeed – 10 Reasons Florida Man is the best Twitter Aggregator
[15]NPR– Florida Man On Twitter Collects Real Headlines About World’s Worst Superhero
[16]Tumblr – #florida man