‘Sitting in a house full of water with the power on is wild’: Hurricane Milton unleashes a flood of Florida Men doing dumb things on TikTok

Hurricane Milton has caused a mass evacuation in Florida and worldwide concern over climate change’s impact on natural disasters, but it is also reminding us of the fact we are in an ‘everything is TikTok content’ era.

Despite being a threat to life, people partial to social media attention and ironic humor have taken the opportunity to create the TikTok posts of their lifetimes. Because five minutes in the limelight is apparently worth putting yourself and first responders at potential risk. But it turns out a lot of the footage isn’t what it seems.

One such TikTok was made on Oct. 9 by a Floridian named Matthew Heller, who uploaded self-promoting posts about his business in between videos that looked like they had been posted live from Tampa. Like other content creators who had hoped to ride out the storm, bringing attention to his personal brand was part of the deal.

The video shows him inside his home, sitting in a kayak floating on several feet of water. On further inspection, he posted a similar video on Oct. 8, before Milton’s landfall. As one comment pointed out, he was retooling footage from Sep. 2024’s Hurricane Helene. One user wrote, “Guys look at the actual time stamp in the bottom right. All these videos are from Helene. He just means stay tuned for round two when Milton comes which is Wednesday night.”

While he didn’t outright claim it was Milton, the caption in the most recent kayak video made no mention of date and time, presumably to increase the chances of it going viral. And the Oct. 8 post has ‘Milton’ and ’10/09/24′ written on the screen despite it not, in fact, being from Milton.

He also posted a preparation vlog that showed him using foam insulation to seal the outside of his property, likely aware it would do very little. This footage does look like it’s from right before Milton.

A more entertaining and decidedly less cynical post showed a man wrapping his “brand new Corvette” in plastic to keep it safe from the flooding, in a location the user said was nine miles from water (later revealed to be Palm Beach). The result is… probably not super effective, but we give ten stars for effort. The sight of a gorgeous supercar in what looks like an oversized grocery bag is a good cure for all the gloom and doom.

In a follow-up post, he explained the car will be in a garage that is only expected to take on around two feet of water due to its location. So there is seemingly no risk of the bright-orange speed machine floating away.

While social media and accessible photojournalism have revolutionized news and the way we can connect in positive ways, it’s hard to watch some of these posts and not feel jaded. The disconnect of comedic videos, often exaggerated or misleading, purpose-built but virality when lives are at stake is indicative of how social media and our exposure to sharing every detail of our lives can result in a strange detachment or disassociation from serious events.

There’s no harm in partaking in some dark humor or laughing about the ways we fruitlessly try to save our sports cars, but much of Milton’s viral content has required debunking. In the age of misinformation, it’s too easy to — forgive our phrasing — be swept up in the collective hysteria, and contribute to someone’s goal of making a quick buck off a natural disaster. That said, if there are more videos of cars in plastic baggies please let us see them.