For your Reading Response for “Florida Man” – please read the two news articles and watch the story video about “Florida Ma” then answer the question below in 250 to 500 words total.

Florida Man: what lies behind the Sunshine State’s crazy stereotype? (Links to an external site.)

Googling ‘Florida man’ is the latest internet fad. Let’s explore why so many crazy stories come out of the state (Links to an external site.)

Prompt 1

Using the two news articles and the video as resources, what do you think are the five reasons for the existence of “Florida Man” – why does he exist and why do he hear so much about him?

In the news article written by Logan Hill, July 2019, in The Washington Post – Is It Okay to Laugh at Florida Man? (Links to an external site.)

The author asks Is it okay to laugh at Florida Man? When you’re joking about real people, it mostly depends on whether you’re laughing at someone, in a dehumanizing kind of way, or if you’re laughing with someone — often because, even (or especially) in their worst moment, they remind you of yourself. Plenty of people laugh with Florida Man, knowing how easy it is to become one. However, the joke often isn’t funny, “because of the mental health issues and drug dependency.

Like a lot of memes, Florida Man’s popularity doesn’t exactly prove or disprove the inherent wisdom of the crowd so much as it highlights our collective contradictions. We like to cheer on the underdog and revel in someone else’s pain. We enjoy mocking and empathizing with the unfortunate, partly because clickbait-or-bust social media is essentially built to multiply one superficial behavioral extreme or the other.

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Professor Peter McGraw (Links to an external site.), who has plumbed the depths of human behavior to determine what is funny and what is not, states “Humor (Links to an external site.) arises when something seems wrong, unsettling, or threatening (a kind of violation), but simultaneously seems okay, acceptable, or safe,” McGraw says. This idea makes up his Benign Violation theory (Links to an external site.), (Links to an external site.) and it serves as the engine driving the book. “A dirty joke trades on moral or social violations, but it’s only going to get a laugh if the person listening is liberated enough to consider risqué subjects okay.” He adds, “Even tickling, which has long been a sticking point for other humor theories, fits perfectly. Tickling involves violating someone’s physical space in a benign way. You can’t tickle yourself because it isn’t a violation. Nor will you laugh if a creepy stranger tries to tickle you, since nothing about that is benign.”

Prompt 2

Is Florida Man a funny meme? The stories are often about people doing crazy stuff that is so outlandish it seems funny but on the other hand, many of the stories involve people who are mentally ill or on drugs. Is it funny because we have all done some crazy stuff and recognize that maybe we aren’t so far away from Florida Man ourselves, or is it wrong because “Florida Man” needs help? Are we laughing with “Florida Man” or at “Florida Man”? What do you think and why?

Answers in 200 to 500 words only.