*confused foreigner noises*

The joke is Ohio sucks. It's an economic pitfall where people outside of Ohio see it as cheap and affordable then they enter and realize their money is damn near worthless now. Add to that the drug use and the fact that damn near everyone here wants to leave because it's a red state acting blue it's pretty easy to joke about

The Ohio class submarine is armed with 144 nuclear warheads on 22 ballistic missiles, each bomb with almost 500ktons of explosive power. It was named for it's terrifying ability to turn any place on earth into another Ohio.
- Do you mean 24 missiles? 144 doesn’t cleanly go into 22.
Yeah but that's not even true. It's cheap to live here and employers pay well, with lots of available work. Maybe in whatever area you live it's rough but it's pretty easy to thrive with very little education in the cities, I'm not sure why you think that someone's money would now be worthless, it's the polar opposite as your cost of living is going to be lower. I'm not sure what has you saying drug use is higher than anywhere else though, quick look at various studies show it's about on par with the rest of the US. As far as people wanting to leave, I don't know many but the ones that do are generally people that don't apply themselves to anything and have a mindset that the reason their life is shit is everyone's fault but their own. Sadly yes, we are a red state due to gerrymandering but that's not a problem that can be solved by turning away intelligent people who are capable of shifting the imbalance. Do keep vocalizing the issue with this though because we need more attention brought to conservative corruption here, and good things are coming of it as we recently had some of them get locked up with sentences that weren't a bullshit slap on the wrist which is cool
- It's a red state in which the cost of living is down and you wish it was blue. Just wow... 😂🤣🥲
Honestly it's evolved well past that to just "hehe ohio"
I thought it was a hawthorne heights song

What many people are saying is correct, but it's only half the story. Since, well, ever, people have made fun of Ohio because it's boring and had absolutely nothing to do in it. There was this popular meme where the destinations to see in Ohio was meeting Scott the Woz, a YouTuber who makes a show of the same name, and immediately leaving.

Eventually, there was that trope of "Only in Detroit" memes of absurd things getting stolen. Eventually, the format branched off into other states with things they're known for, including ironic memes of Ohio having nothing to do, and being absurdly boring. Eventually, someone subverted the Ohio joke and had a video of something...very strange, and unnatural happening in Ohio, with the phrase "Only in Ohio". People loved the subversion so much, everyone joined in, and now the original point has been lost, now, to meme culture, Ohio is now a place where aliens invade monsters ravage the street, and dogs have three legs.

Once heard a joke that many of our famous astronauts come from Ohio because there's just something about the state that makes people want to flee the planet.
What do you mean by "there's absolutely nothing to do in it"?
- They meant "Ohio is boring and there is nothing to do there," I believe

besides all of the tangible reasons to use Ohio as a punchline, it's also just a funny sounding name. most Ohio jokes could be made about anywhere in the midwest, but "Ohio" sounds comical on its own.

there's nothing inherently funny about what the spleen does, but it does sound pretty funny when you say it out loud

Ohio always starts me singing the snow white dwarf song
Ohayou gozaimasu!

Ohio is a cosmic motif throughout space-time. You could travel across the universe and find a place that looks like Ohio. Also it fucking sucks.

Similar to what others have said, tough i don't know that the specific meme trend is right now.

A big thing people say though is 'ohio is so boring/bad/terrible people decide to leave the planet' because so many astronauts are from ohio. On Google maps when you enter other states it does a 'Welcome to BlahBlah', and for Ohio the little symbol is an astronaut