Doom scrolling social media looks to have replaced the age-old pasttime of watching TV in GTA 6, which has prompted feelings of alternating despair and increasing irrelevance in me this morning. I barely understand how TikTok works in real-life, let alone a video game pastiche of it, and oh god, how did I get so old and craggy? I’m just here for the nice-looking flamingos, Rockstar, not a 24/7 twerk stream I can access from the palm of my hand. Of course, TV watching may yet have been preserved beyond what we’ve seen so far in the first trailer for GTA 6, but even if it’s been consigned to the bin of modern history, there might yet be one light in the TikTok-esque darkness to make GTA 6’s in-game social media network worthwhile.
Upon closer inspection of the account names seen in the trailer, it’s “PlanetLeonidaMan” that gives me hope, because if this isn’t a riff on the Florida Man meme, I’ll take a dump on a dead possum during rush hour traffic, hurl Oreos at Matthew as we argue over our empty coffee maker (teapot, come on), and try to cross the Atlantic in a hamster wheel vessel to demand some answers.
In case you’re unfamiliar with Florida Man, open up a new browser tab for a second and just type Florida Man into your search bar. Go on, off you pop. What you’ll now no doubt be looking at is a cascade of increasingly strange headlines, almost all of which begin with “Florida man arrested…”. In fairness, you could probably substitute Florida for any US state and get similar results, but it’s the Sunshine State that’s entered into the realms of popular culture on this one. Even Hitman 2 had a Florida Man disguise in its Miami level – that’s how far it’s spread.
Of course, with GTA 6 also being set in the Miami-esque Vice City, which is located in GTA’s fictional state of Leonida, a Florida Man gag was all but inevitable (and heck, eagle-eyed Redditors have seemingly found the real-world equivalent of the woman wielding dual hammers from in the trailer’s LuchaLibreFan clip, too). And hey, I’m sure DadBodSquad, OfficialPOACH, Have.A.Vice.Day, GeneralCustardCannon, YoMammazJammer, and HighRollerzMag will provide equally entertaining #content, but really, it’s PlanetLeonidaMan I’m pinning my hopes and dreams on.
In the trailer, the clip we see from PlanetLeonidaMan involves a man running away from a cop in front of a petrol station, with the partial caption reading “Usually gotta hit the strip club to see jiggle like that fr…” Honestly, there are too many naked / gas station-themed Florida Men stories to be able to say if GTA 6 is riffing on one story in particular here – unlike our aforementioned hammer lady, for example – but here are some more Florida Men I hope will make their way into the game when it eventually comes out at some undetermined point on PC:
There are so many possible avenues for PlanetLeonidaMan to choose from here, and I hope Rockstar pick some good ones for us to provide some well-meaning levity among all the twerking and booty-shaking. I’m sure there will be plenty more… unpleasant Florida Men in the mix as well, but come on Rockstar, do the right thing and fill it with tales of mostly harmless dummies to give us a good chuckle. I am in desperate need of something to stop me weeping as I try and navigate this new and frightening frontier of social media nonsense.
