A Farewell to Vibes: 2022 Recap Linkstravaganza

I feel like I’ve said this at the end of every year for half a decade, but: OOF. Every day can be a year unto itself because time is a social construct, but looking back at the first few months of 2022, I can’t help but laugh at how young and dumb we were only twelve months ago.

This year was mostly fine for me personally with various ups and downs, but it also felt like the decline of society writ large sped up exponentially: crossing the climate change rubicon, Russia’s war on Ukraine impacting millions of people and global economies, the Christofascist Right systematically dismantling reproductive rights and queer liberation, social media devouring itself, an impending recession and the collapse of crypto...  you get the idea–you’ve been living through it, too.

So in spite of all that (or maybe because of it?) here’s a monthly recap of news items, articles, newsletters, and ephemera that impacted me this year. 2022 was truly A Year if there ever was one, and while I hope 2023 will be different (my sanity relies on seasons, cycles, and clean slates) I’m sure it will be, but as always, maybe not in the ways we anticipate. Strap in, and let's do this:

Q1: The Vibes Are Shifting

January - We started 2022 with vibes, a portent of future hot takes and a decent assessment of the collective consciousness coming out of 2021. Author Hanya Yanagihara published her latest doorstop novel tormenting queers, and Andrea Long Chu savaged it in her review. I can only dream that my writing will one day inspire such intensity, but hopefully not this depth of loathing. In Newsletter Land, worlds collided as Anne Helen Petersen interviewed Ragen Chastain about unlearning fatphobia, and my favorite feminist scold Jill Filipovic popped off on the Pope for scolding women who don’t have children.

Then Meat Loaf died and I listened to the album version of “I Would Do Anything for Love” for a week and felt a lot of feelings I didn’t know existed. In brand mascot news, some men were sad because the Green M&M no longer makes them horny without go-go boots and Minnie Mouse is destroying the fabric of society aka wearing a pantsuit. We had the original free Wordle to salve our souls, which The New York Times then promptly bought and monetized.

February - The Vibe Shift™️ became official, cementing “cringe” as the all-around vibe of the year. We were already exhausted by Everything Culture and Veronique Hyland wanted to make sure everyone knows she coined the phrase “Millennial Pink” back in 2016, thx. Sergio Lopez wrote about the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and its enduring creative legacy and I discovered PR Guy Ed Zitron’s sharp, salty newsletter, wherein he (correctly) defined Web3 as a solution that actually creates problems instead of solving any existing ones.

In podcasts I’ve never listened to and never will, Joe Rogan was revealed to be asshole we all knew he was. Fortunately for Joe, Russia attacked Ukraine and China upped aggression towards Taiwan, so his platforming TERFs, homophobes, COVID deniers, and generally bad people quickly fell out of the news cycle. He has $200 million from Spotify, so it’s not like he cared either way.

March - If anything, 2022 looked like it could be the year that a consensus on the fact that the diet/weight loss/fitness industry is actually bad finally took hold, if only for a few shining moments before the Kardashians removed their butt implants and celebs binged on Wegovy and Ozempic at the expense of actual diabetics who need these drugs to live.

Vanity Fair published this absolutely unhinged cover profile of Grimes breaking the news of her second secret baby (Exa Dark Sideræl) with Elon Musk, followed by news of her dating Chelsea Manning (they broke up in July). This should have been the first warning sign of what was yet to come with everyone’s favorite Divorced Dad Tech Grifter and Apartheid Emerald Nepo Baby, but alas. Grimes's alleged new album, Volume 1, still has yet to drop.

Oh, and Will Smith slapped the ever-loving shit out of Chris Rock on live TV then proceeded to win an Oscar, in case you forgot.

Q2: Who Needs Vibes When You Have Crypto?

April - My other favorite Atlantic writer Amanda Mull called for the exercise industry to do better for beginners, and fat liberationist and public health expert Marquisele Mercedes who also wrote this absolutely gut-wrenching piece on medical fatphobia in Pipe Wrench. Programmer Stephen Diehl wrote multiple (accurate) arguments against crypto: one in simple English, an exhaustive complete one, and a philosophical one, all of which should be required reading for anyone investing their life savings in a complete scam on just about every level. Ijeoma Oluo wrote about interviewing Rachel Dolezal five years ago (it was not fun!), Bon Appetit doofus/"chef" Brad Leone did a video making pastrami that will most likely poison you, and this adorable Zoomer reacting to The Cranberries’ “Zombie” brought me intense joy.

May - Severance premiered on AppleTV+, and this article breaking it down alongside Ling Ma’s 2019 eerily prescient pandemic novel of the same name was pretty brilliant. While some folks got salty about Internet Trends, the Supreme Court was planning to end the federal right to private medical reproductive care! Who would have guessed it?! (The people who have been telling everyone about it for the past 30 years might have). In Good Ol’ Fashioned American Mass Murders, a white supremacist murdered 10 people at grocery store in Buffalo. Not to be outdone, another disaffected young man with access to automatic weaponry killed 19 children and 2 adults at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas. TL;DR: May 2022 sucked.

June - Adding to Q2's cesspool of suck, the Heard v Depp trial started, making me increasingly glad I’m not on TikTok, but then the Supreme Court said lol fuck all y’all and overturned Roe v Wade. Rebecca Traister and Jessica Valenti wrote some really important and heartbreaking pieces about it, but those didn’t make anyone feel better. However, behind-the-scenes photos from the Barbie movie DID make us feel a little better for like 2 minutes, which was nice. Roxane Gay expressed my exact feelings on the unnecessary and propagand-ish Top Gun sequel, and the story I submitted to Kenyon Review was not accepted, but then I discovered this incredible essay about Prince, motherhood, and gender by Maureen Langloss, so I managed to deal.

Q3: Could the Vibes Be Crashing?

July - We saw the first images from the James Webb Space Telescope and to put it succinctly: they’re real and they’re fabulous. Somehow we were (still?) talking about vibes, as well as the sinking sensation of realizing that social media is actively bad for humans and overall society. F1 Bros got big mad that women like F1 now as a result of Netflix’s Drive to Survive, but we laughed at them and continued to cheer on/lust after our favorite big-ego Eurotrash drama bois (except Max Verstappen) as we watched and discussed the races, garnering F1 a larger audience than they ever thought possible (it’s called Content Marketing, sweetie, look it up).

Desus & Mero, formerly of their Number One Show in Late Night, broke up and subsequently broke Twitter for a hot second and our hearts for much longer. Fortunately, Larry David ripped Epstein-associate Alan Dershowitz a new one at Martha’s Vineyard, who then made the mistake of claiming to have been cancelled to Isaac Chotiner at the New Yorker. Beyoncé dropped RENAISSANCE, making everyone remember just how good 90’s house music was.

In actually important news, Kentucky experienced one of several climate catastrophes this summer, as the eastern portion of the state was ravaged by severe rain and flooding six months after western Kentucky was mowed down by winter tornadoes. There were also floods in Yellowstone and St. Louis, hurricanes tore through South Carolina and Florida, and record heatwaves were literally everywhere. But yes, it’s all a hoax.

August - All of a sudden, the vibes turned into a Vibecession? This was about the time Queen Elizabeth II died, and I continued my tradition of not caring about the British monarchy post-1603. It was great. We got a second season of the truly excellent Abbott Elementary, and thus more of Quinta Brunson being delightful, Tyler James Williams having amazing shoulders and the best reaction faces on TV, and Sheryl Lee Ralph giving the best damn acceptance speech ever delivered.

“Quiet Quitting” became a thing and I wrote about it after suffering a near nervous breakdown of my own. The good news? There have been some substantial shifts in how we think about work as a collective, which is a tiny baby step in the right direction, and this newsletter was born out of those weeks of despair, going strong-ish ever since. I wrote about Reservation Dogs, natural deodorant, Alma's "I Forgive Me," One Weird Trick, and My Best Friend's Exorcism, as one does.

September - After months of hemming, hawing, litigation and trolling, Elon Musk finally agreed to buy Twitter (where I have the dubious distinction of 14 years on the platform), making himself the Main Character every single day. For me, the best part was getting to see just how rotten he is to his "friends" who grovel for a few moments of his attention via iChat (get an Android, you coward). Hopefully he played some Trombone Champ to feel better about his life decisions (j/k he has no regrets and neither do any of his peers!!!).

Anne Helen Petersen returned to her cerebal celebrity reporting roots, Virginia Heffernan wrote about how bad Internet TV turned out to be, Iranian women & youth decided they'd had enough of morality police and Roxane Gay wrote gorgeously about the death of Mahsa Amini, Andrea Long Chu once again came in hot discussing our culture's discomfort with biracial Asians, and more grown-ass women wrote about thier experiences with late-diagnosed ADHD instead of just making TikToks about it.

A bunch of Republican women cried because they didn't realize the impact abortion restrictions could have, and Jessica Valenti called them on it, and Lyz Lenz wrote about the brain drain in her home state of Iowa, which can be applied to just about every other flyover state in the country. Here on The Enthusiast, I wrote about wrestling, old but eternal memes, the ephemeral nature of early-fall weather, and lots of Libras.

Q4: The Vibe is Dead–Long Live the Vibe

October - An adorable bisexual won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, and in case you were STILL confused about crypto, Matt Levine wrote an entire issue of Bloomberg to explain it (spoiler: it's exhausting). Other men had a worse time of it, particularly one Tom Brady who decided to play (more) football instead of retiring to spend time with his Brazilian supermodel wife and their kids, and will be regretting it the rest of his days.

Fortunately, Yeah Yeah Yeahs came back with a joyful vengeance, but this apparently signaled the "return" of "Indie Sleaze"? It's like Internet Culture Writers™️ aren't even trying anymore, and the producers of The Great British Baking Show's atrocious Mexican Week definitely weren't trying at all. Meanwhile, my spouse and I went to San Diego, I turned 38, I wrote a bit about my sorta-hometown of Louisville, went to Mexico with my mom and sister, and embraced my lazy spookiness.

November - Things felt grim going into Election Day, but overall it was actually not too terrible for progressives? Ohio elected JD Vance to the senate, but at least Kentuckians voted in support of abortion rights. Gawker is apparently becoming a good site again (maybe), and this piece by Fran Hoepfner about the general nightmare of getting and removing an IUD should be read far and wide.  

Twitter began its final descent, and just when we thought it couldn't get any worse, Taylor Lorenz interviewed the truly iconic @dril, whose hot takes are the only ones that matter. Apple Music released their godawful Replay ‘22, a sad and shitty version of Spotify’s annual Wrapped promotion. Jill Filipovic wrote about the loneliness epidemic in her newsletter, and I made a Hive Social account and promptly forgot about it as I busted out my SAD Lamp, and got up in my feels about Thanksgiving traditions.

December - And so here we are, 10 years later. GQ graced us with their favorite 'fits early in the month, and people finally started realizing that AI is not going to really revolutionize anything–it's just going to keep flattening everything into sameness. The best British comedy and my personal life inspiration Absolutely Fabulous turned 30, and an artist I've been following since my long-ago Tumblr, Pilar Zeta, is hitting it big (see all art above). One pure soul gathered all the Twitter trending topics of the year and it's a rabbit hole worth digging into, dear readers, but with extreme caution.

Ann Friedman's annual Our 2022 recap was tender and ultimately delightful, The Pudding listed out their top data-driven visual stories of the year, Courtney Martin offered up some thoughtful end-of-year reflection questions, and Lyz Lenz named her Dingus of the Year (and it's exactly who you think it is). I celebrated Cat Lovers' Month, dug deep into the Krampus myth, fangirled over 80's pop-country holiday albums, and listed all my favorite books, movies, and music of the year, which probably was not actually as bad I've made it seem here. Truly I'm just ready for a new year and all the potential it holds, which I think is healthy–holding too tightly onto the past has never been much of my vibe.

Thats all for this final 2022 edition of The Enthusiast! Thank you all so much for reading and subscribing to this little newsletter — I'm looking forward to writing and sharing so much more in 2023 and beyond!

Whatever New Years plans you have, be they elegant parties, getting too turnt in the klerb, or drinking cheap sparkling wine on your couch while marathoning Studio Ghibli movies (👋 aka me!), I hope you have fun, stay safe, and wake up to the possibilities of a brand new year with as little hangover possible tomorrow morning. Stay hydrated!

Love,
LKH