Welcome to this installment of Context Clues. Our upcoming series is going to explore

an archetype long in the making of belligerent folk hero of unmeasurable chaos

enshrined in a bewildered mugshot. Beside bizarre headlines like Florida man arrested for calling

911 after his cat was denied entry into strip club. If you are somehow unfamiliar with this

long-lasting viral meme, Florida man emerged in 2012 with the mass sharing of the most outlandish

arrest stories out of the sunshine state. Our next episode will explore the reasons that Florida man

has held our attention and what it is about the history of this place called the weirdest

state in the nation that laid the groundwork for this new American archetype to materialize

from our collective subconscious. We're going to look at the unique history of Florida and the people

who have lived there to see that this Florida man is not a new construction but a lasting

character whose reappearance was all but inevitable. But behind the fun of these headlines,

the humor of these memes and mugshots, there is, as always, a dark underbelly easy to ignore.

One that once explored may lead us to consider the fates of those whose wild antics give us a

digital seconds worth of precious amusement. Now, if you were to conjure in your mind the archetypal

Florida man, you might see before you a relative of a freak show staple, the tattooed man,

a face covered in fading, indecisurable ink. The look and the behavior of our Florida

men create a kind of non-consensual side show where the featured freaks are not there to purposefully

entertain and certainly not there to make a buck off the crowd. There's also something of the

trash talk show in Florida man's lineage, the mass gawking at the human oddities of a particular

cultural moment, as well as its opposing force, the eugenic tinged, high brow opinion of what and who

the middle and upper classes, deem trash. Now, here's an excerpt from our episode called Trash Talkshows.

In 1989, a group of white men and one white woman staged an hour and a half round table discussion

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