My reasoning:
- “While not applicable in all cases, mental health problems often played a role [in Florida Man stories]. Mental health is a huge issue in Florida, which ranks at the bottom of all states for mental health funding, according to the Florida Policy Institute. Lou and Orjoux, CNN 2019
- Florida has a known track record of intimidating and suppressing voters, particularly voters of color.
- ”It’s a democracy, we are just making fun of the voters who made it that way.” Except it isn’t. The will of the Floridian people is not represented in the actions of their leaders. One of many examples: 68% of Floridians want the state to do more on climate change, meanwhile “The Florida Legislature not only bypassed proposals to address climate change during the most recent legislative session, but lawmakers also passed a measure (HB 1645) that would strip the term “climate change” from much of state law.” Does that sound like democracy to you?
Instead of addressing these—and other—root problems, Florida Man posts trivialize the hardships of marginalized individuals, perpetuating societal inequities.
That's on me for not expressing my intention more clearly, sorry. I think you're pointing at a problem that is not really one, memes shouldn't address the root problems you're describing. Changes to the system, policies, activism, volunteer and associative work do. There is a problem with memes desensitizing from real life problem that affect people, but I think wanting memes to achieve the goal of solving those problems is a distraction from actual work that could be done in order to solve them.
Jokes normalize behaviors. It’s actually quite easy to construct a joke that punches up rather than down.