Trending Content: Memes that feature ridiculous contraptions, people, animals, or situations, along with the caption “only in Ohio”. Comment sections of non-Ohio videos are now also filled with “only in Ohio” whenever the posted content is somehow ridiculous.
Trend Description & Meaning
As a rather middle-of-nowhere boring state, Ohio has been the butt of jokes for years. However, as evidenced by the Google Trends chart shown above, Ohio’s prominence as a meme state is skyrocketing in 2022.
Meme videos on TikTok as well as meme photos on Instagram and Twitter feature Ohio as a place of ridiculous & dangerous situations, contraptions, people, animals, and monsters. For example, this video from June 17 shows modern day Ohio as a place of apocalyptic events and monsters:
Another video posted on July 14 shows high wind, rain, and lightning at a theme park in Ohio (Ohio is known for its unpredictable and rapidly changing weather).
On August 4, we had another viral video of the “CGI monsters in Ohio” theme but this time with 10x more views than the video from June:
On October 10, an “only in Ohio” video reached multi-million-like virality status on TikTok:
This generation of Ohio videos is characterized by captions and/or comments similar to:
- “What the hell is going on in Ohio??” (this will likely become less prevalent as the trend ages)
- “Most normal day in Ohio”
- “Safest place in Ohio”
- “Only in Ohioπ”
- “Canβt even X in Ohioπ” (where X is a normal everyday activity such as sleeping, living, eating, driving, etc)
Many of these videos are set to the song “Swag Like Ohio” by Lil B (a song which itself dates back to at least 2010). However, as the trend has reached further and further into the mainstream, additional soundtracks have been embraced:
The origin of the “can’t have X in Ohio” trend appears to be an evolution of the “can’t have shit in Detroit” trend which originated with a meme of someone’s porch being stolen right off their house in Detroit. (Ironically, this picture and the meme itself is actually from Cincinnati, Ohio but only went viral after the “Headd Honcho” Facebook user copied the picture and meme and changed the location to Detroit, a city infamous for crime, corruption, and urban blight.)
However, there is also a second, overlapping but distinct Ohio trend which is older and rooted in the “Ohio vs the World” meme theme which dates back to at least 2015 when this picture went viral:
Later “Ohio vs the World” memes would speculate on unknown dangers centered around the state of Ohio, Ohio’s future conquest of the entire world, and whether Ohio must be preemptively eliminated to save the world.
Is Ohio king of the meme states?
Will Ohio take the crown from Florida as the most mocked state? Less than a month ago, search volume for “only in ohio” surpassed “only in florida” for the first time and the gap has continued to grow.
However, “only in Florida” was never Florida’s meme phrase, and we can see that “Florida man” search volume is still FAR above “only in Ohio” search volume.
Business opportunities created by the “Only in Ohio” trend
- [For Ohio real estate agents] Make social media videos that play into the “Ohio is filled with dangers” theme but make the dangers actually seem cool (e.g. a dangerous but fun sport). Only run this organically not as paid ads.
- [For content creators] Make Ohio videos
- [For artists] Make “Only in Ohio” NFTs, hats, shirts, or other merch. Perhaps a Kraken-like monster emerging with its head from Columbus and tentacles from Cincinnati and Cleveland.
- [For anyone] Make a physical “Only in Ohio” game and run viral TikTok marketing to sell it