Having grown up in that area of the Midwest, I largely agree with the author's categorization, except that "people on their way to somewhere better who got tired and decided this was good enough" describes a LOT of the midwest, not just Indiana. Significant chunks of Michigan, Ohio, and Missouri, most of Iowa/Kansas/Nebraska, etc.
If you read the history of westward expansion, "got tired and decided this was good enough" is literally true for how much of the area got initially settled (by white people)
Spend some time not just driving through them, and one may be surprised to find plenty of diverse and interesting people that live full lives with rich family and social bonds, reasonably priced housing, ample winter outdoor activities (a lot of people actually want snow because it's beautiful and you can do fun things with it) and plenty of nearby nature and recreation opportunities, which I would contrast less unfavorably than the zeitgeist against the crowded, expensive vagrant culture that tends to dominate the more popular places on earth.
I've traveled a lot through the area. I was throughout Ohio earlier this year, spent two weeks in Illinois last year, etc.
The last night there I had dinner at one of the professors' houses in a very nice neighborhood that was absolutely lovely, and in general I thought it was a solid middle class place to live. If it was plopped in the middle of Silicon Valley it would be considered one of the more bucolic and put together cities in the area. And unlike Greenland, the weather is quite good for much of the year and there are trees.
My personal experience does not match the image of tired, doomed NPCs living in a wasteland that it's painted as in this blog post and in these comments.
Ann Arbor is a nice town. Bloomington sounds like a nice town. The vast majority of Indiana and Michigan are sparsely populated and full of people who distrust anyone not like them and are not interested in broadening their experiences.
"Got tired and decided this is good enough" is literally true - small town midwest America is full of the kind of people who don't want to travel or experience new things because they're content in their house with their hobby and their 6 friends and trying to do something like understand how to ride a bus is terrifying.
This is not a stereotype. I know tons of these people. I got out of the midwest to get away from them.
I'll side with the "Indiana ain't bad" crowd on this.
Wasn't it just that it wasn't yet settled, so you could settle there and claim some land? That implies that Indiana or anywhere else on the way would have been at least as desirable, but someone else got there first.
I would argue that this could also be said to people (mainly from more rural parts of the US) who like to disparage large cities. If we're going to lecture city dwellers about how they talk about places like Indiana, maybe it's worth encouraging Hoosiers to go east or west and experience the vibrant neighborhoods and offerings of large coastal cities rather than just assuming they're cesspools of crime and poverty just because they heard a politician say places like Portland, Oregon, are "war ravaged"
If your experience is different, it may simply be the product of cost pressures. It's easier to have a simple life that consists of smoking weed and playing video games with your friends if you don't have to figure out how to afford an expensive house. And something tells me people in Indiana, even their dullards, could figure out how to ride a bus if they really needed to.