Why you should steer clear of “Florida Man Challenge”

Enlarge / “Fun” as in “fund transfer”

This week, a viral “challenge” took Twitter and other social media by storm. The “Florida Man Challenge” called for people to:

• Google “Florida Man” and their birthdate,
• Find a headline about the activities of a “Florida Man” that matched their birthdate, and
• Post that headline to their social media account.

The challenge spread like a cat meme, so much so that typing “Florida Man” into the Google search bar resulted in suggested entries that were almost exclusively calendar dates.

When I walked into the @tb_times newsroom this morning, ALL of the top stories were about #FloridaMan. It was confusing until we realized why: Everyone is googling to see their Florida Man headline.

Of course, I wrote about it:https://t.co/nFMWQPbMRT

— Gabrielle Calise (@gabriellecalise) March 21, 2019

Doing this was, as we like to say at Ars, a really bad idea.