All along the coast of Florida, residents of the Sunshine State are preparing their homes and businesses to withstand the Category 4 force of Hurricane Milton . Millions of Floridians are leaving their homes as local and national officials encourage residents to heed mandatory evacuation orders. But online, staying put and riding out the storm has become the go-to way to get some easy clout — and it’s enraging people who are actually stuck where they are.
Milton is scheduled to make landfall sometime between Wednesday night and Thursday morning, bringing with it the potential for 10 to 12 feet of storm surge in an area already heavily damaged by Hurricane Helene. “I can say without any dramatization whatsoever, if you choose to stay in one of those evacuation areas, you’re gonna die,” Tampa Mayor Jane Castor said on CNN . “If we have that predicted storm surge, it is not survivable.
” But on the social media app TikTok , some users who are ignoring the evacuation orders are using this time to post as much as possible, some hawking products or showing off their expensive cars in the process. “Yall evacuating while I’m staying home in flood zone A, laying down on my 3000 dollar couch waiting for the hurricane to [pass] over,” posted one user , seemingly spurred on by the thousands of comments urging him to evacuate before the storm made landfall. “The media is rage-baiting everybody into thinking this is some catastrophic thing.
It’s gonna be bad. It’s .
