Always Has Been

Always Has Been is an exploitable image macro in which one astronaut looks at Earth and discovers an absurd hidden truth. A second astronaut, already aiming a pistol, answers “Always has been,” turning the discovery into a deadpan conspiracy reveal.

A clear visual precursor appeared on r/dankmemes on December 11, 2016. Redditor Wiegand6 drew two astronauts confronting a flat Earth: one says “wtf it’s flat!!!” and the armed partner replies “Sry fam.” It supplied the discovery-and-silencing setup, but not the later catchphrase.

The earliest supported use of the modern wording is an anonymous 4chan /pol/ post archived on August 7, 2018. Its rough drawing asks “Wait it’s all America?” and answers “Always has been.” Because the author is anonymous and earlier uses have not been responsibly documented, August 7, 2018 is the first-seen date for the recognizable verbal template, not a proven date for every element of the joke.

The format stayed relatively small until Ohio vs. the World supplied its defining mutation. On October 17, 2019, iFunny user iOhioian posted a version in which the entire planet is Ohio; archived reporting recorded more than 46,000 reactions and 1,700 comments within a year. Reposts reached Twitter and Reddit that December, while country swaps such as France showed how easily the map and noun could change.

In June 2020, creators replaced the crude drawings with photorealistic astronauts and cleaner Earth edits. A June 7 r/memes post by nickslicktricks passed 33,000 points in contemporary tracking, and versions tied to games, brands, politics and everyday observations followed. By July, large galleries were collecting the format, confirming that “Wait, it’s all X?” had become a reusable frame rather than only an Ohio joke.

Later edits often remove geography altogether. The planet can stand for a person’s worldview, a technical failure, a fandom or any conclusion that suddenly explains everything. The phrase also survives without the image as a compact reply meaning that a supposedly new revelation was true from the start.

The whole plot reads in one glance: discovery, confirmation and threat. The calm answer clashes with the ridiculous scale of the reveal, while the gun suggests that everyone except the first astronaut was already in on the secret. Replacing one word or one planet is enough to build a new joke.

Use the format when a new fact makes an old pattern look obvious, especially when the answer is absurdly total: everything is Ohio, every problem has the same cause, or a supposedly surprising trait was present all along. The second line works best as dry confirmation rather than explanation.