Is Oklahoma Really the 5th Most Miserable State?

Every once in a while, I'll see something online that makes me do a deep dive on Google. This time it was a TikTok that confidently declared that Oklahoma is the fifth most miserable state in America.

Fifth. Most. Miserable. State.

As a proud transplant and now fully self-appointed honorary Okie, I took that personally. Because when you hear “most miserable,” you don’t think “scientifically measured personal happiness index.” You think, well… people must hate living here.

And sure, if we’re being honest, most Oklahomans can rattle off a short list of grievances without even warming up. The weather tries to kill us at least twice a year. The roads feel like a long-running suspension test. Politics can feel like Thanksgiving dinner with no adults in the room. And yes, if you’ve ever been stuck behind a Kansas plate doing exactly the speed limit in the left lane, you’ve had those traffic flare-ups too.

But after I did the responsible thing and actually looked it up, that wasn’t what the ranking meant at all.

It wasn’t about whether people like living in Oklahoma. It was how people in Oklahoma felt about their own lives.

That's A Completely Different Angle

The ranking came from WalletHub, and the TikTok creator got it wrong, but Oklahoma still landed at 36 out of the 50 most happy states, based largely on anonymous internet surveys and compiled data. Which immediately made me wonder, how exactly do you measure happiness?

Is it a 1 to 10 scale? Is it “circle the smiley face that best represents your mood”? And more importantly, how much does timing matter? Because if you catch me in a mood after dealing with a salesturd, I might not have the most cheery disposition either.

Also, how many Oklahomans make up these polls? Were they having a good week? A bad month? A rough year? Happiness is a spectrum. It moves and shifts, and depends pretty heavily on the exact moment you're asked about it, right? And yet, there we were. Fifth most miserable.

That’s when I fell into a late-night internet rabbit hole that probably should have had a warning label. Somewhere around 3 AM, I landed on the Strauss-Howe Generational Theory. If may have never heard of it, but you're at least familiar with the basic idea that American history runs in cycles. The same types of eras repeat themselves.

Look at the similarities between the 1920s and the 1980s. Fresh off major wars, World War I and the Vietnam War. Recovering from pandemics, the Spanish Flu and later the swine flu era. Manufacturing rebounded in both. Stock markets boomed in both. National pride swelled in both, and a little isolationism snuck in. Bold hair, big energy, big money. 1920s and 1980s, same-same.

The theory gets teeth when you compare the 1950s and the 1990s. Economic expansion. Relative stability. Cultural confidence. The so-called golden ages of America.

Now look at 2026.

We’ve got echoes of the original Roaring 20s. Post-pandemic recovery. Markets climbing. A return to American manufacturing, only now it’s chips and tech instead of steel and tractors. A renewed sense of nationalism and a louder conversation about borders and global roles. But in the mix, there are elements of the 1960s. Civil unrest. Deep political division. Culture wars playing out in real time. The only difference is we’re all plugged into the outrage 24 hours a day.

It's hard to ignore. We are more connected than any generation in history. We're also more exposed. Bad news isn't a nightly broadcast anymore. It’s a constant drip. A firehose. A push notification at 2:17 PM reminding you that something somewhere is a total dumpster fire.

Attitudes Are Contagious

My mom used to always say "Garbage in, garbage out." Back then she was talking about movies and TV shows we weren’t allowed to watch... No Ren & Stimpy or Beavis & Butthead in our household... And I hate to admit this, Mom was right.

As a grown adult with a fully-formed frontal lobe, I see how the media you consume today shapes you tomorrow. It wasn't just her words though, I learned through experience.

I stopped watching the news channels the day after Trump won his first election. Not because I hated the outcome, the news just shifted into something that I couldn't stand to watch. It became theatrical. Loud. Vicious. Rachel Maddow cried live on air, and as funny as it was, it seemed more like a bad audition for Netflix's next poorly written, cheaply made movie.

Within a couple of days, I quite literally felt better. Like the weight of the world was lifted. Ignorance really is bliss.

A few years later, I deleted Facebook off my phone. Not my account. Just the app. It was like cutting off a finger to spare the limb, or breaking any other addiction, but the same result. A bump in personal contentment.

See Miserable, Hear Miserable, Be Miserable

So when I see Oklahoma labeled as one of the most miserable states, I don’t immediately think, well, everybody here hates it. I think maybe we’re just living in a moment that is objectively a lot to process.

We’ve got nonstop information. Economic uncertainty, depending on who you ask. Political tension that feels personal because lots of people use politics to define who they are as a person, even though they shouldn’t. Social comparisons are on steroids. Living a much grander life online, keeping up with the Joneses... It's just so heavy, and if you’re carrying all of that, of course you’re going to feel it.

None of this is to dismiss real mental health struggles. Depression is real. Anxiety is real. And if your unhappiness runs deeper than political fatigue or social media overload, there is zero shame in talking to a professional. We don’t treat diabetes with willpower. We treat it as a health condition. Your mental health is no different.

But if you really feel generally worn down, maybe it’s worth asking a simple question.

What are you feeding your brain every day?

Garbage in, garbage out.

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