It’s that time of year again, where we try to make sense of the last 12 months of human existence. Rather than a list of books, music or films that stuck with us from the year, the Esquire Middle East team decided to compile moments that will stay long in the memory.
These days much of our life is mediated through viral events, that they become pieces of pop culture in themselves, so here is our very incomplete list of the best, worst and weirdest of 2022.
ART BECAME A TARGET
Picasso, Monet, Da Vinci. Name an painting by any major artist in a big Western museum and odds are they’re now terrified of tomato soup, paint and glue. This was the year climate activists started taking out their justified wrath on…. beautiful art? We’re still not sure what hearts and minds these stunts are shaping, but hey we’re writing about them in this roundup so they’re doing something right. Or wrong enough to be noteworthy.
TWITTER STORM
Comedy became legal again on Twitter only to be banned a day later. If you don’t know what we’re talking about, you haven’t been following the sustained meltdown at the social media company. Real-life self-styled Tony Stark and on-and-off (probably more off than on from now on) richest man in the word Elon Musk bought the company to save it from itself. Now who will save it from him?
R.I.P QUEEN ELIZABETH II
The word mobilized to remember one of the most famous monarchs in global living memory. Tributes poured in from all over the world and – because it’s Britain – a very long queue formed and became almost as big a story.
DEPP V HEARD
Definitely one of the weirdest moments of the year. TikTok was overtaken by zealots-turned-legal-experts on both sides of the divide. People watched live footage of the trial. There were odd revelations. But at the end of it all, it just felt a bit sad all round.
YE
What an incredible fall from grace for one of the most celebrated musical artists and fashion business leaders of the past decade. The artist formerly known as Kanye West disintegrated in real time on our social feeds, taking lucrative brand deals down with him. Hang onto those Yeezys. Or don’t.
THE ARAB WORLD CUP
The FIFA World Cup came to the Middle East for the first time ever, setting up shop in Qatar. Despite pre-tournament jitters about preparedness, it was as joyful a World Cup as we’ve ever seen. Fans danced in the street, celebrated and sobbed. While Leo Messi finally secured undisputed sainthood, a lion’s share of the celebrating was by Arab teams and their fans. Huge upsets by Saudi Arabia over Argentina, Tunisia over France, and Morocco over Belgium (and Portugal… and Spain) made the world finally take notice of what a game-shifting tournament this really was.
THE SLAP HEARD AROUND THE WORLD
Was it a set-up? Was it rigged? It took everyone a minute to realize that when Will Smith got up on stage at the Oscars and slapped Chris Rock, it wasn’t a bit. It was a real slap. Really real. You could feel it in the endless replays. Things got even weirder when Smith won an Oscar a few minutes later and went on to get jiggy with it for the rest of the evening. Now he’s banned from attending for 10 years and the steady stream of apology videos continues.
COVID ENDED (SORT OF…)
Like all pandemics, it ended at different times for different people (just don’t tell China). It’s safe to say that 2022 is – if not the end of the pandemic – the end of it ruining all of our lives collectively. Mass mask-wearing is a thing of the past and many of us have finally washed the awful memory of regular PCR tests from our swab-poked brains.
CRYPTO CRASH
Oh, how things change. In January, everyone from Spike Lee to Matt Damon was pied-piper-ing the masses towards cryptocurrency investment, touting that fortune favours the brave and things were only going up from here. With Bitcoin down 70% on the year and major exchanges like FTX out of business, the Bored Ape NFTs are disappearing from Instagram avatars as fast as you can say ‘to the moon’.