Hate about Florida - Banned In Florida Club

10 Things to Absolutely Hate About Florida (Where Do We Even Start?)

Look, we just wrote a whole love letter to Florida celebrating beaches and manatees and cultural diversity. But let’s be real: living in Florida means dealing with some truly infuriating, maddening, soul-crushing nonsense that makes you question your life choices on a regular basis.

So grab a cold drink (you’ll need it—it’s hot as hell here), and let’s talk about what makes Florida residents want to scream into the void.

The Heat and Humidity (It’s Not Just Weather, It’s a Lifestyle)

“But it’s a dry heat!” said no Floridian ever.

Florida summers aren’t just hot—they’re oppressive, swampy, walk-outside-and-instantly-regret-it hot. The humidity makes 90°F feel like 110°F. You sweat through your clothes walking from your car to the store. Your glasses fog up the second you step outside. The air feels thick enough to chew.

And it’s not just summer. It’s April through October. That’s seven months of feeling like you’re living inside someone’s mouth.

The AC runs constantly, driving up electric bills to absurd levels. Going outside during midday feels like opening an oven door. Outdoor workers face genuine health risks. And thanks to climate change, it’s only getting worse.

Oh, and the afternoon thunderstorms? Sure, they cool things down for about 20 minutes before the humidity cranks back up even worse than before. Thanks for that.

The Insects (Welcome to Bug Hell)

Florida has bugs the size of small birds and the aggression of loan sharks.

Mosquitoes that could drain a small child. Palmetto bugs (which are just cockroaches in Florida disguise) that fly directly at your face. Love bugs that splatter across your windshield by the thousands. No-see-ums that bite like needles. Fire ants that turn your lawn into a minefield. Termites slowly eating your house from the inside out.

And that’s not even getting into the giant spiders (banana spiders with webs big enough to catch small birds), scorpions (yes, we have those), and whatever fresh horror recently arrived in a cargo shipment from somewhere tropical.

You can’t leave doors open. You can’t eat outside without being swarmed. Bug spray becomes a mandatory part of your daily routine. And no matter how much you spray, there’s always another palmetto bug waiting to terrorize you at 2 AM when you get up for water.

The Drivers (Mad Max: Fury Road, But It’s I-4)

Florida drivers are legendarily terrible, and for good reason. We have:

Confused tourists going 40 mph on the highway while consulting paper maps
Aggressive locals weaving through traffic at 95 mph
Elderly snowbirds who can barely see over the steering wheel
Transplants from everywhere bringing their own terrible driving habits
People texting while driving because apparently survival instinct is optional

And somehow, all of these groups are on the road at the same time, creating a chaotic hellscape where turn signals are treated as optional suggestions and zipper merging is a foreign concept.

I-4 through Orlando is regularly ranked one of America’s deadliest highways. Miami drivers treat speed limits as personal challenges. And don’t even get me started on what happens when it rains—Floridians apparently forget how cars work the second moisture touches pavement.

Hit-and-runs are disturbingly common. Road rage is epidemic. And good luck if you need to make a left turn anywhere—you might be there until next Tuesday.

The Tourism (Our Economy Runs on Inconvenience)

Yes, tourism money keeps Florida afloat. Yes, we need tourists. But oh my God, living in a tourist-driven economy is exhausting.

Traffic becomes unbearable during peak season. Restaurants have hour-long waits. Beaches are packed shoulder-to-shoulder. Theme parks are overrun. Grocery stores are full of confused visitors blocking aisles while trying to figure out where the Publix deli is.

Spring breakers turn our beaches into frat house annexes. Cruise ship passengers clog up coastal towns. Disney tourists descend on Orlando like locusts. And everywhere you go, someone’s stopping in the middle of the sidewalk to take photos of… a palm tree? A building? Who knows.

Try explaining to your boss why you’re late because tourists couldn’t figure out how to use a roundabout. Try grocery shopping when the parking lot is full of rental cars and nobody knows where anything is.

And the worst part? We have to smile and be nice about it because “tourism is our economy!” Meanwhile, the actual residents can’t afford to enjoy their own state because everything’s priced for tourists with vacation budgets.

The Cost of Living (Paradise Isn’t Cheap)

Remember when Florida was affordable? Yeah, neither do most people anymore.

Housing costs have skyrocketed. What used to be affordable beach towns are now million-dollar playgrounds for the wealthy. Rent in Miami rivals New York City. Working-class families are being priced out of communities they’ve lived in for generations.

Property insurance is in crisis mode—companies are fleeing the state, premiums are through the roof, and homeowners can’t sell because nobody can get affordable insurance. Hurricane risk has made insuring Florida property a nightmare.

Homeowners insurance, flood insurance, windstorm insurance—you need multiple policies just to protect your home, and together they might cost more than your mortgage.

Property taxes keep rising. Hurricane shutters cost thousands. AC repairs are constant and expensive. And despite having no state income tax, you’re hemorrhaging money in other ways.

Oh, and good luck finding affordable housing near your job. The combination of low wages, high housing costs, and terrible public transportation creates a perfect storm of financial stress.

The Politics (Authoritarian Absurdity)

We could write a whole book about this (and we basically are, across this entire website), but let’s hit the lowlights:

Book banning in schools and libraries because certain politicians are terrified of kids learning about history, diversity, or the existence of LGBTQ+ people.

“Don’t Say Gay” laws that erase LGBTQ+ students and families from public education.

Attacks on academic freedom with government officials dictating what can be taught in colleges.

Abortion restrictions that deny women bodily autonomy and healthcare access.

Voter suppression efforts that make it harder for marginalized communities to participate in democracy.

Climate change denial while the state literally floods and burns.

Government overreach dressed up as “freedom”—like banning businesses from requiring masks during a pandemic or punishing companies for their political stances.

The hypocrisy is stunning: “We’re the free state of Florida!” they say while banning books, controlling curriculum, and dictating what teachers can say. That’s not freedom—that’s authoritarianism with better PR.

The Hurricanes (Annual Terror Season)

June 1st through November 30th is hurricane season, which means six months of checking weather apps obsessively and wondering if this is the year a Category 5 monster destroys everything you own.

When a storm’s coming, it’s pure chaos:

Gas stations run dry
Grocery stores are emptied of water and batteries
Hardware stores sell out of plywood and generators
Traffic becomes gridlock as people evacuate (or try to)

Then there’s the waiting—will it hit? Will it turn? How bad will it be? You’re glued to the weather channel watching a spinning cone of uncertainty that might destroy your house or might miss you entirely.

If it hits, you’re looking at:

Days without power in sweltering heat
Property damage that insurance may or may not cover
Flooding that ruins everything
Debris cleanup that takes months
PTSD from the whole experience

And then you do it all again next year. Living in Florida means accepting that at some point, a hurricane will probably wreck your stuff. It’s not “if,” it’s “when.”

The Overdevelopment (Paving Paradise to Put Up a Parking Lot)

Florida is being developed into oblivion. Every patch of natural land is fair game for another:

Luxury condo complex
Strip mall with the exact same chain stores as every other strip mall
Gated community destroying wetlands
Resort hotel blocking beach access

Developers have enormous political power, so environmental protections get gutted, zoning laws get bent, and natural Florida disappears under concrete and asphalt.

Wetlands—crucial for flood control and wildlife—get filled in for parking lots. Springs are threatened by over-pumping and pollution. Wildlife corridors get cut off by highways and housing developments.

The traffic gets worse, the infrastructure can’t keep up, and the natural beauty that attracted people here in the first place gets destroyed. But hey, at least we have another Walgreens on every corner, right?

The “Florida Man” Reality (It’s Not Just a Meme)

While “Florida Man” headlines are funny from a distance, actually living around Florida’s chaotic energy is… a lot.

Meth. So much meth. Florida has a serious drug problem that contributes to the bizarre crime stories you see in the news.

Guns everywhere. Florida has some of the most permissive gun laws in the country, which combined with heat, humidity, drugs, and general chaos creates a concerning situation.

Scammers and con artists who see Florida as a target-rich environment of tourists and retirees.

Aggressive panhandling in tourist areas. Homeless crisis that cities try to hide rather than address. Crime rates that vary wildly but are concerningly high in many areas.

Living here means accepting that yes, someone probably will try to fight an alligator, someone will call 911 over a sandwich order, and someone will steal something utterly bizarre for incomprehensible reasons. It’s not just headlines—it’s Tuesday.

The Cognitive Dissonance (Paradise with Problems We Refuse to Fix)

Here’s what makes Florida truly maddening: we have the resources to fix our problems, but we refuse to do it.

We’re a wealthy state with a massive economy, yet we:

Underfund education consistently
Ignore infrastructure until bridges collapse
Deny climate change while our coasts flood
Cut environmental protections despite depending on natural beauty for tourism
Attack healthcare access while having large elderly and vulnerable populations
Suppress wages while costs skyrocket

We could invest in mass transit—we don’t. We could protect our environment—we don’t. We could prepare for climate change—we don’t. We could fund education—we don’t.

Instead, we elect leaders who prioritize culture wars over actual governance, ban books instead of fixing insurance crises, and worry more about what bathroom people use than whether residents can afford to live here.

Florida chooses its problems. That’s what makes them so infuriating. These aren’t inevitable—they’re the result of deliberate policy choices that prioritize short-term profits and political posturing over long-term sustainability and quality of life.

Why We Stay (Despite All This)

So why do we put up with hurricanes, heat, bugs, bad drivers, worse politics, and everything else?

Because even with all these problems, Florida is home. Because the things we love outweigh (barely) the things we hate. Because leaving feels like giving up.

And because someone has to stay and fight to make this state better. If everyone who sees the problems leaves, Florida gets handed over completely to the forces destroying it.

So we stay. We complain (loudly). We vote. We organize. We resist.

We love Florida despite all this nonsense. Or maybe because loving something broken means working to fix it.

The Banned In Florida Club Exists Because…

We’re not going to just accept Florida’s descent into authoritarian, climate-denying, book-banning absurdity. We’re going to call it out, fight back, and demand better.

Because Florida deserves better than this. And so do we.

What do YOU hate about Florida? Share your frustrations in the comments—misery loves company, and we’ve got plenty of both.

Remember: You can hate what’s being done to Florida while loving Florida itself. That’s not contradiction—that’s caring.