'Florida Man' The Series Coming Soon To Netflix

FLORIDA — "Florida Man." How did we get there? Is Florida Man simply a search-worthy meme used as a catchall term to poke fun at people committing crimes in the Sunshine State?

Or is Florida Man symbolic of something deeper — someone who’s proudly independent and refuses to live by someone else's code?

Next month, Netflix will take a deep dive into the nuances of "Florida Man" in its new show by the same name. The series is slated to premiere April 13.

"We’ve all seen the meme. We’ve all seen the headlines about a seemingly singular 'Florida man' breaking laws in the most creative ways imaginable," Netflix wrote on its website, adding the new series will dig "way deeper into the swamp than a news snippet can."

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"The central question of Florida Man is: 'How did we get here?'" creator and showrunner Donald Todd told Netflix. "(People)laugh at the mug shots and the headlines, but what’s the story behind the meme?"

According to Netflix, the series will focus on Florida man Mike Valentine, played by Edgar Ramírez. A recovering gambling addict who reluctantly returns to his home state when mob boss Moss sends him to find his missing girlfriend, Mike gets caught up in situations that would put some of the best “Florida man” memes to shame.

"He finds out that he can’t quite escape the hometown he tried to leave behind," according to the show's description.

Why "Florida Man?" Todd knows the subject intimately — he was born and raised in the Sunshine State.

"As I grew up, I never stopped thinking about why Florida is Florida,” he told Netflix. “Florida is a thin layer of porous crust on top of a hundred feet of water, and it’s maybe a few feet above sea level… it might all sink. So when you feel that everything is temporary, you take what you can when you can get it."

There are several theories about the origin of Florida Man and why the trope exploded across news homepages, Twitter feeds and subreddits.

The meme itself originated in 2013 with the creation of Twitter account @_FloridaMan, which quoted ubiquitous news headlines containing the words "Florida man." The account often referred to Florida Man as the "World's Worst Superhero," implying the headlines were not showcasing a variety of people but a single prolific suspect, according to multiple reports.

Florida Man's explosion could be attributed to Florida's strong public records laws, which allow journalists and others access to a wide range of police reports, photos, videos and other details surrounding crimes.

“Florida has got one of the broadest public records laws in the country,” Barbara Petersen, president of Florida’s First Amendment Foundation, told CNN in 2019. "As soon as that incident report is filed (by law enforcement), we can go and make a public record request and get it."

The concept has also garnered its share of critics, one of whom accused journalists of documenting "the travails of the drug-addicted, mentally ill, and homeless."

"Some of the reporting of the Florida Man genre is undeniably worthwhile journalism," Bob Norman wrote for the Columbia Journalism Review. "But Florida has no monopoly on strange events, drug addiction, or mental illness, the lifeblood of the form."

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