I mean, in a way its kinda not. I use to laugh at all the FloridaMan stuff but having watched the amount of law stuff and knowing the politics that led to what places like Florida are actually like today, theres nothing funny about it really.

People who choose to live in Florida and vote with their dollars deserve whatever scorn that can be heaped on them. But I try to reserve judgement until I know someone has made that conscious choice voluntarily before I let it rip

Give an example of the insult in question and I’ll offer an opinion.

Because there’s a wide stretch of sky between “Florida blows goats, I feel sorry for the people that live there” and “Floridians are all cannibalistic subhumans with unkempt underarms”.

This is an overgeneralization. It is not always okay to insult someone for their state. In fact, I would argue that it is only rarely “ok” and that requires certain rather specific conditions to be the case.

People often do it without it being fully okay, because not everybody agrees exactly what these conditions are, and that creates an unwinnable situation where you’re guaranteed to offend somebody, and some people decide that is acceptable. Is this is a “majority rules” situation where if the majority are not offended it is okay? Not really, but many people (perhaps even the majority) treat it that way.

I would offer to describe some examples of the sort of conditions that apply, but doing so is fraught and dangerous, not just because nobody agrees universally, but also because anything I could possibly say about someone’s state, someone else will invariably chime in and try to apply the same logic to gender or race. They will use it as an excuse to justify racism and sexism as if they are simply being reasonable. It is a trap and I will not fall into it.

Instead I will offer you some questions that you can use for yourself to decide what conditions you might think should apply. And then you can feel free to apply them or not. I’m not your dad. None of these are absolute anyway, they are always on a sliding scale, there are always situational elements and not every situation is going to be the same.

• Does a person choose to live in a state? Were they born there, and did they have a choice about that? If they do live there, would they choose something different given the opportunity? Is it plausible that they might get such an opportunity eventually?
• Does a person sometimes insult their own state? Is it okay when they do it? Is it a joke when they do or are they serious? Familiarity breeds contempt, but sometimes we just need to vent about our own situation, and that doesn’t mean it’s automatically okay for others to do the same or double-down, or sometimes you are welcome to play along. How do you know the difference?
• Could the target of the insults be interpreted to be directed at the state’s government, law enforcement, education or other specific state-level systems rather than an individual or the state’s population as a whole? These sort of things probably qualify more as free speech rather than hate speech.

I know this thread is in a no stupid questions forum, but damn this is a stupid question.

deleted by creator

It’s not a part of you, it’s not that personal.

It’s sort of like making fun of BMW owners for using their middle finger as a turn signal. All insults are insulting, hence the name, but some are just more acceptable because they’re not really about a part of you as a person.

Ragebait, go away, come again another day