About

Wait, It's All Ohio? Always Has Been refers to an exploitable template in which two astronauts are floating in space. One looks at Earth and realizes the entire planet is made up of something other than what is expected, and asks, "Wait, it's all X?" The other astronaut, preparing a gun, says, "Always has been." The meme first originated as an MS Paint drawing in late 2016, evolving over the following years into multiple versions until a high-resolution version of the astronauts and the Earth emerged in 2020, becoming the most dominant format.

The format is typically used with creators swapping out the world and using the phrasal template to create new jokes, as well as object-labeling memes that place text over the planet and astronauts. Additionally, it's also used as a simple catchphrase online.

Origin

On December 11th, 2016, Redditor Wiegand6 posted in the /r/dankmemes^[11] an MSPaint illustration of two astronauts looking at flat earth. One astronaut says, "wtf it's flat!!!" The other, pointing a gun at their fellow astronaut, says, "Sry fam." The post received more than 485 points (97% upvoted) in less than four years (shown below).

On August 7th, 2018, an anonymous 4chan user posted the earliest known version of the template, using America as the surprise^[1] (shown below).

Spread

The template did not begin seeing widespread use until over a year later in conjunction with the rise of Ohio vs. the World edits, when "Ohio" became a popular variation of the template's punchline. user iOhioian posted such an edit was posted to iFunny^[2] on October 17th, 2019 (shown below, left). The post received more than 46,000 reactions and 1,700 comments in less than one year.

This was reposted to Twitter,^[3] Reddit,^[4] Tumblr^[5], and Instagram.^[6] The image inspired further MS-Paint edits. For example, Facebook page Twingo Memes^[7] posted an edit in which the punchline was France, gaining over 530 reactions (shown below, right).

Edits would later come to use more realistic-looking versions of the astronauts. For example, on June 7th, 2020, Redditor nickslicktricks posted an example to /r/memes,^[8] gaining over 33,000 points (shown below, left).

On June 19th, 2020, Twitter user @Alexis_Grump^[9] made an example using Bugsnax (shown below, right). On July 14th, Ebaumsworld^[10] published a gallery featuring notable examples of the meme.

Various Examples

Template

Search Interest

External References