It's probably Clevelanders more than Ohioans. Specifically because hollywood and media and seemingly everyone under the sun thought it's been "cool" to take shots at and shit on Cleveland for a long time because the river caught on fire 100 years ago.
Imagine being happy and proud of where you live and most people that know jack squat about it, shit on it all the time? Or do it about your family.. or you to make it more personal. Cleveland is full of a lot of gritty, blue collar folk that would rather throw down rather that let be ok for people to run their mouth. A city full of underdogs.. now mix that with having big hearts like so many folks in the midwest and "fierce" is what Clevelanders are.
It's always been a strange state to me. It's a state with a bunch of medium sized cities and none that are a true "draw".
I.e. I don't see putting Cleveland, or Cincinnati, or Columbus on my "must visit for a vacation" list. Just as I don't really have "Indianapolis" or "Omaha" on my "must visit for a vacation" list. But with Ohio, they make it up in volume lol.
To me, it's the opposite of what you usually hear about a place: "It's a great place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there."
The reason I say it's the opposite is that these medium sized cities seem to have
most of the advantages of large cities, without
most of the "big city problems" that really big cities have. They're never going to be the "draw" that NY, Chicago, SF, Seattle, Atlanta, etc are. But they also don't have a lot of the downsides that NY, Chicago, SF, Seattle, Atlanta, etc do. It just seems like a nice, albeit a little boring, place to raise a family. And when raising kids, boring and safe isn't exactly a negative lol.
So Ohio to me is the state where I'd probably say: "I wouldn't want to visit, but I might like to live there."
