Wait, It's All Ohio? Always Has Been

A meme featuring two astronauts realising that earth is Ohio takes over social media, but where did this come from?

Another viral meme that many of us do not understand, especially if you’re not in the meme culture loop. But don’t worry, you’ll get all the info you need so you won’t be clueless next time someone refers to it.

The joke sees two astronauts in space, where one realises that the Earth is Ohio, while the other astronaut points a gun at him, replying “always has been”.

wow i looked up the original meme thinking it was gonna be "it's all round?" "always has been" which i think is hysterical
but apparently it's Ohio propaganda
— Hardcore to the mega (@hamburgermilo) July 11, 2020

View Tweet

Always has been Ohio – explained

Essentially, the meme is an exploitable template, meaning that any word can be used in replacement of ‘Ohio’. It plays on the movie cliche, where one character finds out a huge secret, but gets killed by another to prevent the leak of the secret.

The first Ohio version was made on MS-Paint and it gained notable popularity in December 2019, when there was a rise in the ‘Ohio vs the World’ edits – a series of jokes based around an unknown danger in the US state and how they were planning to take over the world. These edits date back to 2016.

‘Always has been Ohio’ gained a second wave popularity on Reddit and Facebook in June 2020, when a redditor reposted the meme but this time with realistic depictions of the astronauts and Earth.

The origin

Before ‘Ohio’, the earliest known version of the template was submitted onto anonymous forum ‘4chan’ in August 2018, the birthplace of many internet memes. Originally, America was used as the suprise.

So all in all, “Wait it’s Ohio? Always has been” is a combination of a running joke since 2016 and a template meme from 2019, to create this one breathtaking meme in June 2020.