By Below is our list of heroes and monsters from 2022. For the last few years, we’ve taken inventory in this fashion—personal, idiosyncratic, and somehow when assembled a snapshot of yet another unsettled, strange, glorious 12 months. (You can read the full archive here.) At this point, it’s become something of a holiday tradition.
As always, our list is by no means exhaustive. Each entry reflects less the perfect distillation of the year than our personal obsessions. But if you take all of this together, we hope you have a pretty representative time capsule of 2022. If we missed one of your nightmares or loves, maybe we can pick that up next year.
We will be adding to this list over the holidays. And so if you do not immediately see some of the items it will feature—a German coup, a bot, Mike Davis, Eric Adams, cars, strikers, a flamingo—please, keep coming back. You may even discover a few more.
Hero: Alabama prison strikers
They carried out a historic three-week labor strike and brought the neglect of the country’s worst prisons to national attention.
Monster: VAR
Give technology an inch and it’ll disallow a goal and ruin your morning.
Monster: Bob Dylan and the never-ending grift
Notes from a disillusioned Dylan fan.
Hero: Mike Davis
To read Davis on practically any subject was to come away with a sense of awe, and a promise to yourself to learn more about the world, and then do something about it.
Monster: Heinrich XIII
Heinrich XIII Reuss stands accused of being the ringleader of a coup plot inspired by the ludicrous theory that Germany is not a sovereign state.
Hero: The bot that tweets lyrics from the band the Fall
“You better listen.”
Hero: Abortion providers who refused to quit
“Retire? What does that mean?”
Monster: Capital One Café
It can be hard to literalize how financialized capital has overtaken our lives. I figured coming to Capital One Café might help.
Hero: Pink Floyd, the flamingo that escaped a Kansas zoo 17 years ago
“He’s still out there. Maybe we’ll see him again.”
Hero: Megan Thee Stallion
“Traumazine” shattered pernicious tropes—and invited Black women like me to lean into anger, our vulnerabilities, and take control.
Monster: Eric Adams
The New York mayor spent most of his first year as a political enigma. But in the last quarter, Adams revealed his cruelty and ignorance.
Hero: The Gen-Z voters who saved us from ourselves this November
Young people are turning up to vote in larger numbers and helping decide elections.
Hero: Lula
“Our struggle is a quest for the Spring.”
Hero: Swifties
It was a great year for holding artists accountable.
Monster: People suing to kill student debt relief because they’re not included
Cue the world’s tiniest violin.
Monster: Brazilian football players and the gold steak
Salt Bae’s gilded age restaurant is not a good look.
Hero: The James Webb Space Telescope
In the age of space billionaires and their fans, it reminds us what the stars always were: an orientation, not a destination.
Hero: Ali Sagle’s Dreams of Dinner
An unlikely postpartum delight, Slagle’s cookbook debut is both a service and a dash of a more sophisticated life beyond baby spit-up.
Hero: Dwight Garner, and his perfect evisceration of Jared Kushner’s book
Someone had to read Kushner’s book. We’re lucky it was Garner.
Hero: Iranian women
They have been at the forefront of the months-long protests triggered by the death of Mahsa Amini.
Monster: The writer and director of Blonde
Andrew Dominick is responsible for a special spot in the pantheon of terrible films.
Hero: The new three-digit national mental health crisis hotline, 988
You finally don’t have to recall an 11-digit phone number in the middle of a mental health emergency.
Monster: Billionaires
When you have that much, some portion is invariably blood money.
Hero: Those LA police funding billboards
The audacity to run on police overfunding during a crime panic.
Monster: J.D. Vance
Liberals will have to now live with who they empowered.
Hero: The movement to bring Brittney Griner and pay equity back home
“WNBA players need to be valued in their country and they won’t have to play overseas.”
Hero: The woman who defeated two anti-abortion ballot measures
Rachel Sweet helped block an anti-abortion ballot measure in Kansas. Three months later, she did it again in Kentucky.
Monster: Cars parked in bike lanes
You are not god, you just own a Toyota. Please stop parking in the bike lane.
Monster: Moynihan Train Hall and the hostile architecture ethos
This will not stand.
Top image credits: Plan B Entertainment/ZUMA; Tom Dorsey/Salina Journal/AP; Scott Garfitt/AP; Francois Nel/Getty
