I have NJ on my birth certificate but I left +15 years ago.

Southern NJ has a lot of nice spots but the majority of people who see NJ are going to see it from an interstate highway called I-95 which runs through the state. The last few miles of I-95 before it crosses the Delaware is in a state called Pennsylvania in a spot that's mostly forest and little apparent development. Crossing from Pennsylvania to New Jersey, that forest continues but less then a hour of driving later it gives away to large corporate office parks and it just gets dirtier and unnatural as you go until you reach a part of Newark that just looks like shit... at Newark there is an oil refinery, a gigantic building with a "Budweiser" sign on it that looks like a refinery as well, and then you start filtering off to the various routes into Manhattan without another glance.

Play that backwards and some people experience NJ as this shit hole, low budget version of the scenery in the movie Blade Runner. First impressions matter and even though things improve the further you get from Manhattan, most people think it improves because of Pennsylvania.

One other route people take through NJ is the New Jersey Turnpike which as I remember it, was pretty terrible the whole goddamn way from start to finish. Making that experience worse is a feeling like you just got back up to speed and now you have to slow down for the next turnpike.

Aside from those, when I was a kid, Seaside New Jersey was kind of seedy but the reality TV show "Jersey shore" really didn't help its image.