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For any well-informed citizen, it's crucial to stay up-to-date on the news. But considering the endless amount of information we’re bombarded with daily, it’s impossible to keep tabs on every hilariously bizarre thing happening on our planet. Or is it? Well, let’s just say that the internet has proven time and again that wild and ridiculous headlines will never go unnoticed.

After all, some of them totally catch us off guard and leave us unsure whether to facepalm or do a spit-take. Like "Bear breaks into Colorado house, plays the piano but not very well" or "Thief cut victim's grass before taking lawnmower". These are just a few little gems found on the 'Internet’s Craziest Headlines' Twitter account — aka the hall of fame of the most ludicrous titles noticed on TV and print.

So if you find entertainment in the Florida man and his antics whenever they manage to find a way to your feed, you’ve ended up in the right place! Let us present you with a new level of absurdity that is the compilation of images we wrapped up right below. Enjoy scrolling through these entries and hit upvote on your favorite ones. And if you've ever come across an outlandish headline yourself, we'd love to hear all about it in the comments.

Psst! More newspaper headline madness awaits in our previous post right over here.

#3

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Nathaniel
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

And people wonder why it would be a bad idea to have armed police in schools.

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Jo Johannsen
Community Member
1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

OK, you brats, the first kids that barks gets it right between the eyes. (A sorrowful joke about the state of the world.)

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Pug Pug
Community Member
1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

PLEASE PLEASE vote this one to the top. There are so many cops that are bad and get away with s**t like this. I dont hate the police but i do hold them to a higher standard. So this guy got what he deserved. If you are afraid, of a dog, then you shouldn't be given a gun

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CG
Community Member
1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Anybody who decides to actively try to harm a doggo deserve whatever karma that comes for them.

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MonkeyMummy.
Community Member
1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Then they can use a dog treat or pepper gel. Like the mail delivery people do. Dumb cop.

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RandomCitizen
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

"Good guy with a gun" should we let people like this anywhere near schools?

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MonkeyInTheMiddle
Community Member
1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

WHO THE HELL WOULD SHOOT A DOG I DON'T CARE WHAT BREED IT IS, HOW IT'S BARK SOUNDS, OR HOW ANNOYING IT IS, NO ONE'S SHOOTING A DOG IN THE GALAXY THAT I LIVE IN.

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gila the night/sand
Community Member
1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

You mess with the fluff, you get the ruff (i couldn’t come up with any other rhymes, do any of you guys have rhymes to use?)

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R D
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

And they roll him away, still trying to look cool😎😂😂😂

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Marnie
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I would guess this story isn't as black and white as this post makes it appear. That is usually the case.

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kkathleen517
Community Member
1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

What a f*****g ugly evil piece of s**t. I hope you blew off ur goddamned d**k. But it was probably to small to be a target.

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Vishrut Rao
Community Member
1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Cop shots the dog Dog: ZA WARUDO! ( Places the bullet in the path to Cop's arm) Dog: TIME WILL RESUME NOW! WWWWRRRRRRRYYYYYYY

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survivalrhino
Community Member
1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Then had to go to Academy for six weeks to requal on weapons......

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katekat_1
Community Member
1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I say taze that guy everytime he yells or raises his voice

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Lady Z Azrael
Community Member
1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Bad policeeeman. No one shot shot a animal just for barking. Theyz just protecting owner

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Agent_fox77
Community Member
1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Hahahhaha that’s what you get for animal abuse and INSTANT KARMA HAHAHA

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Kawaii Potato
Community Member
1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Stupid....how would you shoot your self unless your among the gun at yourself?

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AwesomeLeoWife
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1 year ago

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The headline doesn’t tell the part of the story where the dog was attacking charging him. Blatant anti-police agenda here

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Mistiekim
Community Member
1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Any time a dog takes 1 step toward a police officer, they consider that “charging”. Police shoot family dogs for no reason all the time - you see it on their body cam. Unless you have some rabid, foaming at the mouth dog in your face there is no excuse. They carry tasers and pepper spray for crying out loud.

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A brief scroll through this list may be all it takes to convince you that reality is often stranger than fiction. Even in this modern world where few things can genuinely knock us off our feet, people (and animals!) still manage to surprise us with the most absurd actions that exceed our expectations. News stories ranging from charmingly unexpected to plainly bizarre inevitably lead to funny headlines that are gaining popularity online every day. But this does beg the question: why are we so fascinated with them in the first place?

To learn more about the abundance of weird news items and the fine line between an informative headline and a fake one, we reached out to Deborah S. Bowen, Ph.D., an Assistant Professor of PR Instruction at the University of South Florida. When asked what impact the digital world had on the spread of weird news stories, she told Bored Panda, "Because of its relative accessibility, the internet has become a powerful dissemination tool."

"Those fun stories from far-flung places (or not so far-flung!) are much more available now. People can amplify all kinds of messages across any number of platforms and can cast a net as wide as their imaginations," the professor added. "And all this posting can be done at no cost. It can even become a moneymaker for the person aggregating and publishing these wild tales. Besides, we love entertainment, and what’s more entertaining than the truth?"

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Brandon Marlowe
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1 year ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Look for the bear necessities. The simple bear necessities. Forget about your worries and your strife.

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Consider the Florida man scenario. The slew of stories that begin with those two words makes it look like the state is occupied by the wackiest and weirdest people ever. As a Florida resident, Bowen shared a few thoughts on the matter.

"Some might suggest that many stereotypes are rooted in some grain of truth," she explained. "I suggest that Florida arrests are part of the public record, and therefore become excellent content for communicators across the media! Admittedly, though, there's nothing like seeing 'Florida Man' in a headline and wondering, 'will THIS be the one I know?!'"

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When it comes to our passion for these stories, the professor explained that their catchy and odd nature is what tends to spark our curiosity. "The best headlines — the infamous 'Headless Body in Topless Bar' being the classic archetype — grab the reader’s attention immediately and invite the reader on a newsworthy adventure."

After all, getting your headline clicked on is far from an easy task. The words you choose to wrap your title in are the first, and probably the only, impression you make on the potential reader. "It’s awfully hard to make day-to-day happenings sound cool and sexy; it’s much easier when a story is so absurd that the headline becomes an easy 'get' for the author," Bowen said.

"Wild headlines promise a real escape for a reader, and we crave, as humans, the emotional release that can come from reading a truth so different from our own. Whether hilarious or sad or evoking Schadenfreude [a German word meaning the pleasure we get from witnessing someone's misfortune], readers want the impact of the tale to be significant — to deliver the emotional punch promised by the headline."

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While it’s fun to devour stories that bend the limits of our imagination, they also serve as proof that anything can be considered newsworthy these days. The problem is that with the heaps of information that consistently grace our feeds, it has become difficult to differentiate facts from fiction.

"One of my favorite sayings is 'Content without context is just noise,'" Professor Bowen noted. "It’s critical that we become informed and savvy consumers of media, and that we take no information for granted as truth. A headline tossed out casually on, say, a social media platform should always be questioned, even if the source is knowledgeable. Find the reporter or author. What has that person contributed to the news before? Is there an 'angle'? A bias?"

#15

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Mattewis88
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1 year ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Still waiting for that third arm the anti-vaxxers promised me after I got the jab. My dresses don't have pockets.

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But many readers forget to do their own due diligence before sharing stories on social media. In an attempt to prove it, the satirical news site the Science Post published a piece with a frightening headline: "Study: 70% of Facebook users only read the headline of science stories before commenting." The content of the text, however, was mostly blocks of "lorem ipsum" text. As of today, it has been shared over 194k times.

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Nathaniel
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

"Oh, no. Oh, thank you, none of that foreign muck. What? Garlic bread? Garlic bread? Garlic? Bread? Am I hearin' you right? Garlic bread? No, thank you, I've got some milk roll in t'case that'll do me. The toasty loaf. The garlic bread!" Peter Kay.

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Interestingly, it inspired researchers at Columbia University and the French National Institute to do an independent study of news consumption on social media. They collected the number of Twitter’s 280 million followers who potentially viewed and shared a news link and how many clicks those same links amassed. The researchers found that 59% of links shared on social media have never actually been clicked — users retweeted the news without bothering to read it.

"People are more willing to share an article than read it," study co-author Arnaud Legout said. "This is typical of modern information consumption. People form an opinion based on a summary, or summary of summaries, without making the effort to go deeper."

#19

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Brandon Marlowe
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

It wasn't already? Damn! All this time I could have been.... wait. Did I say that out loud?

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According to Professor Bowen, we, the readers, need to better understand the context in which news is being presented. "One important piece of that is to fact-check. Google will help readers find sources that are reliable and are generally truly journalistic in their approaches."

She stressed that it’s "absolutely imperative" to become media-savvy, especially when we "see deep fakes (visual and audio) on the horizon" as technology advances. "Media literacy is an important tool for each of us to have. It can save us from scams, phishing attempts, and, of course, 'fake news.' With media literacy comes the ability to distinguish fiction from fact and fact from opinion."

Bowen advised you, dear readers, to be diligent in searching for truthful information. "As William Shakespeare once said, 'Don't believe everything you read on the internet!' Make sure to find your information from solid, reliable sources. While their headlines might not be wacky, there's a treasure of truth to be learned. And enjoy every journey down your factually accurate and no less amazing rabbit holes," she concluded.

#26

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Dave Nalesnik
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

“What you doin’ babe?” “Just chillin’.” “Not after I caught you cheating on me, you ain’t.”

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Deborah B
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

If you can't tell the difference between a puppy and a ferret then maybe you deserve to be sold ferrets?

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#31

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#35

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#38

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Robert T
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

This is real and has been featured on BP before. Just chalk it down to being Florida. ;-)

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#40

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Brandon Marlowe
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

This has been a test of the zombie apocalypse warning system. If this had been an actual emergency you would have been instructed to tune in to your local station for further instructions. Repeat. This was only a test.

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#42

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Purple light
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Fake news, there wasn't any bible eating and the guy pictured is a sex offender, but he is not on death row.

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#44

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#45

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Nathaniel
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Posties take note, this Postman managed to deliver his packages successfully!

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#47

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The lesbian knitting panda
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

For the non Brits Harrow is one of the fanciest private schools in the UK, along with Eaton, it is famous for churning out self-important rich twits who own golf courses.

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#49

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Note: this post originally had 70 images. It’s been shortened to the top 49 images based on user votes.