https://soundcloud.com/citationsneeded/episode-75-florida-man
“Naked Florida man revealed on video sneaking into restaurant and munching on ramen.” “Florida man broke into jewelry store, cut himself on glass and bled all over everything, police say.” “Florida man arrested at Olive Garden after eating spaghetti with his hands.”
We’ve seen this supposedly hilarious stories for years on our social media feeds and wacky listicle. Florida-themed crime stories, we are told, are uniquely bizarre and worthy of derision. But what are we really mocking when we mock “Florida Man”?
Please don't make fun of people with mental health issues living in a state who's only treatment is lifelong imprisonment and sedation. Note this is also a version of cop-aganda, cops want you to know that they are doing their job and keeping all the crazies locked up.
Exposing people with mental health issues in this way is horrible, these are typically the worst moments of peoples lives and exploiting it as cheap entertainment is disgusting.
For those not wanting to listen to an entire episode of the podcast theres a transcript here: https://medium.com/@CitationsPodcst/episode-75-the-trouble-with-florida-man-33fa8457d1bb
Snippet: "Michelle Bruder: Yeah. It kind of just comes down to if you treat, if you consistently treat people’s struggles and desperation, a lot of these Florida men stories are, they’re acts of desperation. Not just people who are mentally ill or who are doing things in public that are weird, literally because they do not have a place in private to do them. If you’re homeless, you can’t do your weird stuff in your house. There’s no house, but it’s also, these are acts of desperation a lot of times. I actually have my own Florida Man story where on my birthday a man leapt onto the car that I was in along with many other cars on a major road in Orlando while naked. He was an addict. He was mentally ill and it was an act of desperation. This was somebody who needed help and the system failed him and he did not get the help that he needed until that is what he ended up doing. So when you turn it into a joke, it’s just this silly thing and then it translates to how you act in real life and how you interact with homeless people and mentally ill people.
If you just see them as the little clickbait headline that pops up on Facebook, then you’re not seeing the complexity of the issues. You’re not seeing the ways that these are people, they’re not jokes. They are people who need help and who are not receiving that help."
There was a story on Something Awful, way back in the day, about something like this.
A woman went on a couple dates with a guy, and he was incredibly self conscious about the size of his penis. So, on the second date, things were going well, he takes off his underwear, and his penis was swollen and bumpy, etc. She screamed and said 'what the hell is all that!', and he explained because he was self conscious about his size, he'd capture some of the bees his family kept and force them into stinging his dick, because the sting made the tissue swell up.
For years, this led to 'beenis' being a meme on the site.
No need to thank me for this knowledge, friends.
