Ohio vs. the World

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About

Ohio vs. The World refers to a series of memes which speculate on an unknown danger centered around the state of Ohio, and Ohio scheming to take over the world. Gaining initial traction thanks to viral images such as "Ohio Will Be Eliminated," "Danger Presented by Ohio," "Time to Nuke Ohio" and most notably Wait, It's All Ohio?, the trend gained a pronounced presence online in early February 2020 following a series of viral deep-fried memes.

Origin

On August 6th, 2016, Tumblr^[1] user screenshotofdespair posted a photograph of a bus stop digital screen with the message "Ohio will be eliminated." on it (shown below, left). The post received over 107,900 likes and reblogs in the following years and has been reposted multiple times, including posts on Boing Boing^[2] and Reddit.^[3] Additionally, a screenshot containing comments by Tumblr^[4] users fontech and postmarxed has also been circulated (shown below, right).

On January 26th, 2017, Redditor^[5] chukotkaa posted a humorous edit of an existing meme "How far away is Ohio" reedited as "Danger Presented by Ohio" to /r/mapporncirclejerk (shown below). The image was widely circulated online in the following years.

In November 2018, an edited panel of Garfield comic strip showing Garfield thinking "Time to nuke Ohio" gained popularity online (shown below). The earliest known post of the image is an October 31st, 2018, /r/okbuddyretard submission by Redditor^[6] MatticusPrime127.

Before December 9th, 2019, an unknown user posted an MS-Paint drawing of an astronaut finding out that all land on the Earth is actually Ohio, with another astronaut preparing to shoot him to cover up the conspiracy (shown below; the edit is based on a previous meme^[6] "wait it's all America?"). In the following days, the image received viral spread on iFunny,^[7] Twitter,^[8] Reddit,^[9] Tumblr^[10], and Instagram.^[21]

Spread

In December 2019 and January 2020, the Wait, It's All Ohio? meme has been gained notable popularity as a meme format, particularly on Facebook (examples shown below). On December 17th, 2019, Facebook^[11] page "Posting that one Ohio meme every single day" was created. On December 31st, 2019, iFunny^[12] account OhioHateMemes began posting memes expressing dislike for the state, accumulating over 1,300 subscribers.

On January 30th and 31st, 2020, an October 2019^[18] meme which imagined Ohio taking up the entire territory of the continental United States was reposted in /r/pyrocynical^[13] and /r/memes^[14] (shown below, left). Starting on January 31st, 2020, Redditor Bereatue posted multiple memes about Ohio invading Canada and other countries to /r/memes, /r/dankmemes, /r/DeepFriedMemes and other subreddits. After three posts submitted by Bereatue to /r/DeepFriedMemes^[15]^[16] and /r/dankmemes^[17] on January 31st and February 1st, 2020, received over 25,600, 13,500 and 6.700 upvotes, respectively, memes about Ohio invading the rest of the world gained significant popularity in major meme subreddits on Reddit.

Starting on February 4th, 2020, Redditor garnt311 reposted several memes of Ohio vs. the World genre in /r/teenagers, titling his posts "help me spread Ohio memes." The initial two posts received over 18,400 and 5,200 upvotes.^[19]^[20]

Wait It's All Ohio? Always Has Been

Wait, It's All Ohio? Always Has Been refers to an exploitable template in which two astronauts are in space. One looks at Earth and realizes the entire Earth is made up of something other than what is expected and asks "Wait, it's all X?" The other astronaut aims a gun at his head and says "Always has been."