Are you Ohio? According to the kids, that's not a good thing
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There are longstanding profiles of certain states that, for better or worse, they can never shake. California's association with new age spiritualism, New Jersey's association with organized crime, and Florida's association with eclectic weirdness via their "Florida man" headlines.
Now, Ohio has one of its own. Are we finally getting credit for being first in flight? Are the kids associating us with airplanes, buckeyes, Lebron James or James A. Garfield?
"It was sort of used as, caption for anything weird or goofy or cringey or anything that was a little bit absurd. And they would say 'only in Ohio,'" said Jen DeLuke, teen librarian for the Brecksville branch of the Cuyahoga County Public Library. She gets a firsthand look at what Generation Alpha, loosely defined as those born in or after 2010, are saying and doing at work every single day.
And all day long, she hears “Ohio” used as a put-down: slang for anything undesirable. Lame, weird, dysfunctional, preposterous; all these words can now be replaced with “Ohio.”
"I first started hearing about it as a slang term, almost like 2021, 2022, and it was mostly starting, as all great things do, as an internet meme," said DeLuke.
DeLuke is based here in Ohio, where Ohioans themselves are using it as a negative. So how far-spread is the usage?
Hello world
Walter Prendergast is 10 and lives in Cheltenham, England.
"My mum is from Cleveland; she grew up here. I’m basically visiting where she grew up," said Prendergast.
After the recent passing of Prendergast's grandfather, his mom brought him home to see where she grew up. He had previously been here as an infant, but this was his first trip to the states with conscious memories.
The kids in his school in England warned him before his trip of what to expect.
"They said Ohio is like cursed or something. They said Ohio is messed up," said Prendergast.
Jon Malangoni is an Ohio expat who lives in Finland. He says he was rudely introduced to the slang recently when his 4th grader came home from school one day, perplexed.
"He asked me why 'Ohio' meant 'bad,'" said Malangoni.
Vague origins
It’s tough to diagnose precisely where slang comes from, but in this case, many attribute it to the anecdotal appearance of Ohio in news stories ranging from the odd to downright disturbing.
There was the one with the pro-fisherman who got caught putting weights in his prize-winning catch or the man who nearly lost an arm to a bite from his pet zebra. And of course there is the long list of more disturbing murders and violent crimes that have also happened in the state, capturing national imagination, cases like Ariel Castro and Jeffrey Dahmer.
In short, the title belt long-worn by Florida as the nexus of weird people and occurrences may have been passed to Ohio.
Grant Barrett is the co-host of the public radio show "A Way With Words." He says slang is a pushback against the mainstream.
"Slang has this ability to help us identify who belongs, who's an insider, who's an outsider, and where we fit into the group as well," said Barrett.
That might help explain why even Ohio kids themselves have joined in, using their own state’s name as a diss.
One person’s perception of a place or style differs wildly from the next. Yet everyone seems to agree that "Ohio" is an insult — what gives? Barrett has an explanation.
"Language spreads the same way that other things spread. It spreads on these networks of society," says Barrett.
He said slang follows a similar adoption curve to disease, and though underlying technology has changed, the basic mechanisms have not. Language still spreads person to person, but now with TikTok and other social media, we see far more people than we ever have before.
"What we do get from television and from social media are new lexical items, new words or phrases, expressions. And this is where slang tends to shine and tends to have its moment," said Barrett.
Vibe shift
So the slang gets passed along and reused by kids who may not even be able to find Ohio on a map. It doesn’t matter if they know the origin of the phrase, or anything about the actual state itself.
They just know the vibe.
"New language is new to everyone. At some point there are some people ahead of the curve, some people on the curve, some people behind the curve. But there's always going to be this this slope of acceptability and knowledge and slang is... slippery," said Barrett. "Slang Takes a long time to finally resolve into its ultimate meanings."
Katy McAfee is an Ohio expat and reporter for NPR member station, KUT, in Austin, Texas. She recently discovered the trend herself and went to the campus of University of Texas to see if the Gen Z kids there could shed any light on it.
"There was like an ironic joke, because Ohio is like the most boring state," said one young man.
A young woman cut in, "Oh! Ohio was making fun of people from Ohio and the state of Ohio, I'm pretty certain."
"Because who the (expletive) lives in Ohio anyway?" her friend interjected.
Quick burn
The good news for sensitive Buckeyes is that these types of slang, that are disconnected from personal experience, tend to burn out quicker.
"Because we have this kind of innate sense when slang is done. If it appears in mainstream publications or our parents are using it, we just know, okay, the outsiders have got ahold of this language; I need to move on to the next thing," said Barrett.
So we can hope “Ohio,” which most kids out there probably know little about, won’t have the staying power of a word like “cool,” which has survived for decades due to universal understanding.
For his part, Walter Prendergast found his mother’s hometown to be nothing like he had been warned.
"Ohio is really nice, I like Ohio. A little old-fashioned [but] I like Ohio," said Prendergast.
Only time will tell though if his positive vibes can influence anyone else across the pond. Until then, Barrett advises Ohioans to go along for the ride.
"States make fun of each other. Every state, for example, seems to pick one state next to and say, 'Oh, they're worse drivers than we are.' Everyone busts chops," said Barrett.
The prescription is to take it in the spirit of good fun, and maybe it will be gone before we know it.
After all, overreacting to a joke? That's so Ohio.
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