If something really crazy happens, like the recent story from Georgia involving the heist of $98,000 worth of ramen noodles, then yeah, that’s weird news.
But it’s not the BEST kind of weird news, because that’s all there is to it.
If something crazy happens and it’s randomly tragic—say, lightning hits an innocent old man on his nightly walk with a faithful dog—that may be weird, and rare, but it’s not a good weird news story, either. Because it’s simply sad.
The very best weird news stories involve three separate ingredients: (1) somebody being a complete idiot in (2) a completely surprising and unusual way, with (3) karmic payback that’s on par with their special brand of idiocy.
Here are the major forms of Weird News Karmic Payback along with examples.
P.S. Warning: there’s bad language in these videos.
1) Pranks that backfire
A good-natured prank that works is funny. An evil prank that backfires is funny cubed.
2) Road ragers gets served
Most of us drive to work, which means we spend more time than we want dodging drivers who are texting, smoking, eating Big Macs or texting while smoking and eating a Big Mac.
Self preservation? Perfectly understandable. Road rage, where you use your car as a weapon, or get into a real fight? Not cool.
So when I see an example of a road rager getting the business, either from a cop or by karmic payback, it warms my heart.
3) Picking on a rare pupper, kitteh or wild animal
Animals are involved in weird news stories all the time. It’s unexpected for the world’s top predator to have the tables turned.
4) Bully gets a beatdown
This is a primal, powerful story. Bullies are everywhere, and we expect them to win.
The more a victim seems smaller, meeker or weaker, the better it is when they actually beat the bully.
5) Criminal stupidity leads to instant justice
Crime is bad enough. Being uniquely stupid while committing a crime? Better.
The internet of today has four basic building blocks:
(1) memes with dogs wearing Christmas sweaters and such;
(2) videos of cats knocking objects off counters;
(3) recruiting posters for the Empire that reddit fanboys spent waaay too much time drawing; and
(4) videos of Alex Jones ripping his shirt off as he screams about Hillary and Mueller and the Illuminati meeting in the basement of a pizzeria to put chemicals in our water to turn our free American frogs COMPLETELY LIBERAL AND IRREVERSIBLY GAY.
I want to talk about the dog and cat part, because reddit will get bored with Empire recruiting posters and Alex Jones is now broadcasting his insane rants and brain pill pitches exclusively to MySpace or whatever.
Rare puppers and kittehs are forever, though.
Why is that?
Three reasons.
The first deals with how the furballs are alike, and the other two are because of how different they are.
Reason Number 1) Dogs and cats completely own the sweet spot of adorable and skilled
As a father, I know why toddlers are so entertaining.
Human babies are adorable but unskilled. They don’t do much.
Teenagers have the opposite deal: adult-like skills, yet they generally try hard to be tough and cool instead of adorable.
Toddlers, though, are illegally cute while doing and saying surprisingly funny things all day.
It’s the same with dogs and cats: forever child-like and cute, but skilled enough to surprise us, get into mischief and be entertaining.
Plus, dogs and cats are so common and intertwined in our lives that there will never be a shortage of photos, gifs, memes and videos with them, especially dogs and cats PLAYING WITH TODDLERS, which is just adorbs cubed and so unfair that it’s cheating.
Reason Number 2) Cats are cute balls of fur, claws and pure evil
Yes, they cuddle us. When they feel like it.
Mostly, though, cats only do what cats want, which is typically (a) laying around to conserve their energy so they can get to the real business of (b) sneaking up to attack other life forms, (c) knocking every object that’s not nailed down from your dining room table and kitchen counter and (d) randomly whacking owners or other cats in the face, just because.
Having owned cats, I believe deep in my soul that cats are pissed off by the fact they’re not remotely big enough to kill us. Not that they WANT to murder-death-kill us. Their inability just gives them existential angst.
So yeah, turn on a camera when a cat isn’t napping and you’re guaranteed to catch them being little vandals, if not felonious rogues.
Reason Number 3) Dogs are loyal, lovable goofballs
A big reason dogs are vastly different from cats is they’re pack animals and therefore can actually be domesticated, not just tamed like cats. Dogs actually have social manners.
You can tame just about anything, if you raise it from birth and it imprints on you. Cats, bears, cougars, whatever. (No, not sharks, worms or trees. Come on. Let’s just talk mammals.)
But animals you tame will never truly be domesticated like dogs, goats, horses, cows and other pack animals. Check out GUNS, GERMS AND STEEL by Jared Diamond. He’s explains the heck out of this in an interesting, world-altering way. Seriously. Wouldn’t have modern civilization without domesticated plants and animals.
What makes dogs internet gold is their pure joy, their ability to be trained and how hard they work to be loyal and useful.
Dogs understand they’re part of the family, the park, and that means contributing. Doing their part. Protecting the pups and toddlers. Guarding the pack’s territory. Helping out.
Their mischief tends to be misdemeanor level versus the felonies committed by cats.
Sometimes, I look at our Hound of the Baskervilles and marvel at the fact there’s a jet-black wolfbeast sitting there, 100 pounds of muscle and teeth just waiting for the latest orders from me, who he treats like some kind of all-powerful wizard he’s thrilled to be a sidekick for–and that he takes his job of guarding the house seriously enough that I have no doubt he’d take a bullet for me or the fam. That’s loyalty. The silly dog went right after a bear one morning in our backyard. Except I don’t think he sees that as silly, but as his duty, just like he knows we take care of his food, control the lights and temperature and make the big metal horses come alive or go to sleep according to our whim.
The videos of dogs that hit me in the feels the hardest are when they’re overcome with happiness and tippy taps–or diligently trying to copy and please us.
For that, I have to go with Team Dog, despite having owned cats for longer. Because loyalty and love wins out.
As a reformed journalist, I have a lifelong fascination with weird news—an addiction that a single state tries hard to satisfy.
Every. Single. DAY.
No other state can hold a candle to Florida.
It’s the only state with its own Fark tag, with so many weird news headlines starting with “Florida man” there’s a Twitter handle that endlessly tweets out insane stories starting with those two words.
I could not love Florida more for this.
Here’s a sample of recent Florida headlines, lovingly curated by fark.com:
All this craziness packed into a single state begs the question: Why does Florida Man live in Florida?
Theory # 1: Deadly wild animals up the wazoo
Alligators, sharks, pythons invading the Everglades—and those are just the apex predators. You’ll find crazy stories about rabid racoons, bat infestations and all sorts of animal disasters and shenanigans. Yes, that’s the proper spelling. Take note.
Few other states boast the biodiversity needed to generate this much mayhem.
Theory # 2: Dumb criminals
A weird news story’s power gets squared when a stable genius criminal does something truly idiotic only to have karma delivered by the local wildlife.
One great example: man commits a robbery at night and the cops chase him … so he makes the brilliant move of hiding in a nearby pond, where an alligator has him as a midnight snack.
Theory # 3: Paaaaarty time
Florida is seen as a tropical getaway, a place where you go to party on spring break or to retire in the sunshine.
Alcohol and drugs are a common ingredient in weird news stories. Florida gets far more than its fair share of dumb criminals doing dumb things after getting hammered or high. Sometimes both.
Theory # 4: The power of convergence
Every great weird story is a combination of factors, usually (1) men who are (2) drunk or high, doing something risky involving (3) crime, (4) firearms, (5) explosives or (6) wild animals who can kill you.
It’s like baking a cake. Even if most states have an ingredient or two, they don’t have all six, not in the quantities that Florida does. It’s a giant state, one of the biggest, with more people moving there all the time and all those pythons in the Everglades busy laying eggs when they’re not fighting alligators. The weird news will only grow with time.
VERDICT
Florida is an interesting, dynamic place, a semi-tropical paradise that also happens to be home to some of the craziest stories you’ll ever see. We love you, Florida Man—don’t change a thing.
As a pookie, it felt perfectly natural to learn about gorillas, pythons and such from hour-long documentaries starring a kind, grandfatherly gentlemen bankrolled by an insurance company in Nebraska.
Today, we fire up the interwebs to watch 2-minute videos with Randle losing his mind as he extols the insane bravery of honey badgers–or some random man with a killer Morgan Freeman impression narrates how the cuttlefish do.
I still love animals, documentaries and documentaries about animals. So it warmed my heart to learn of 31 brand new species discovered by amateur naturalists, ordinary people who wouldn’t dream of bestowing their finds with 47-syllable names derived from Latin.
Here’s the list, with actual photographic evidence of each new species:
Just a beautiful story by Matt Lorch at Q13, and this prison is in my county. I knew about this program, and some folks who’ve helped with it. This story does them justice.
A four-minute+ piece is crazy dang long for TV news. Good on Q13 for going deep with this one.
We need more stories like this that show the power of hope and redemption.
If you haven’t seen it, check out their other videos, especially the ones where Batman and Superman are just in a cafe, drinking coffee and roasting each other. Beautiful.
Also: saw ROGUE ONE on opening night and will dissect it later, then open up giant veins of speculation on how Snoke is actually a royally pissed off Mace Windu and Rey is the granddaughter of Palpatine.
The first murderer I ever met was tall and awkward, with curly hair. But this was sixth grade, and we were all a bit awkward. Every one of us.
This kid didn’t grow up to stalk the streets and slay prostitutes until the TV stations gave him a nickname.
He didn’t buy an AR-15 and shoot up a lecture hall or a nightclub.
This boy became a killer that same year.
One day he was in school. The next day he didn’t show up, and the next, and the next, until we finally learned the truth: he’d been charged with murder. Continue reading “The killer beside you”→
This is the video that has the internet, and the mainstream media, losing their minds.
It’s like The Dress, except whether a bit of fashionable fabric is blue or gold didn’t really matter to anyone, while the existence of massive alligators roaming golf courses could, in fact, matter a great deal to ALL THE PEOPLE IT GOBBLES UP.
So yeah, this is exciting and fun. Let’s break it down.
Evidence pointing toward fakery and prankery
1) Nothing screams “green screen” like a green background
We all know how you make a fake video, or do special effects in movies. It starts with a green screen.
Adding a moving object that goes straight across, left to right, on the same plane? Piece of cake.
2) Terrible audio
Audio that’s all chopped up points to film that got edited to bits.
3) No closeup
With most footage of real-life craziness, the person shooting it has a choice: (a) run far, far away from Things That Can Kill You, like tornadoes, great white sharks, zombies or alligators the size of garbage trucks, (b) risk your life to see it, but only from a safe distance, (c) get as close as you can for a real look at the thing and a chance for YouTube infamy or (d) be smart and use the magic of zooming to get a closer look without turning into lunch.
Why is the shot so static? Anybody with two brain cells to knock together would zoom in on this monster.
Evidence making me think it’s real
1) The shadow knows
No, not that Shadow.
Check out the shadow of the gator as it crosses the sand trap. Pretty hard to fake that.
2) Alligators this size are rare, but not insanely rare
If you’ve ever watched National Geographic, The Crocodile Hunter or any other show dealing with nature, you’ve seen crocodiles and alligators. And yeah, they get big.
It’s a reptile thing. I believe reptiles keep growing and growing until they die.
Could be wrong. Not a scientist. Wait, I’m right. They grow forever.
3) This is Florida
If you told me this video was shot in Georgia, Michigan or California, I’d be 149 percent more skeptical.
But we’re talking about Florida, the only state with it’s own Fark tag.
Weird news and Florida go together like chocolate and peanut butter, Han Solo and Chewbecca, coffee and milk.
There’s so much weird news coming out of this state, there’s a Twitter account dedicated to insane headlines that all start with “Florida Man,” as in “Florida man dresses like ninja to rob 7-Elevens” or “Florida man hides from cops in pond, gets eaten by alligators.”
14. 
The Red Pen of Doom 