No, the popular real estate scam of the 1920s was selling "oceanfront" property in florida that was really just swampland. The origin story for Florida Man is

No, the popular real estate scam of the 1920s was selling "oceanfront" property in florida that was really just swampland. The origin story for Florida Man is that Florida's sunshine laws make police records public by default, so on a slow news day the local paper just trawls whatever wacky arrest records are open to the public and publishes that shit. Dumb crazy people are everywhere in the USA (and anywhere else) -- although more Florida stories involve alligators than average.