The greatest tweets of 2022: Twitter’s last ‘normal’ year

2022 was certainly…a year for Twitter. It’s hard to call it a “good” year for the site, considering the rumors about Elon Musk buying Twitter sounded like a bad joke and then eventually became a horrifying reality. That reality has led us to a place where Twitter might now allow 1,000 character posts that are rampant with hate speech and COVID misinformation while telling us that everything is fine in company communications.

Oh, and there’s the part about how Musk thinks it’s a good idea to let all of the worst people in the world back on the site. Let’s not leave that out.

Still, even though Twitter is ending 2022 in a substantially worse place than it was at the start of the year, there was still a lot to celebrate. For the most part, 2022 was the last “normal” year on Twitter and that entailed a whole lot of incredible memes, massive cultural moments, and just good old-fashioned gags, riffs, and japes. 

It’s not possible to fit everything into one article, but here are just a few of our favorite Twitter bits from the last year before things got totally out of control.

The slap heard ‘round the world

Will Smith slapped Chris Rock at the Oscars. You may have heard about it. It dominated the news cycle in a way that nothing at the Oscars has in a long, long time. Hollywood’s response was outsized, as Smith was banned from the event for 10 years. The incident even prompted writer and director Judd Apatow to tweet (and then delete) that Smith could’ve killed Rock. Apatow apparently wasn’t joking. The whole thing was kind of ridiculous.

Naturally, it made for great Twitter fodder.

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Seriously, it’s a crime Conan didn’t have a network talk show for this.

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That’s just a fun thing to imagine.

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And here’s Andrew Garfield, paying as much attention to the Oscars as we all did.

Trust me, I’m not worried

Remember the movie Don’t Worry, Darling? I’m going to guess you probably don’t. The Harry Styles vehicle didn’t review especially well and the main reaction most had to the movie itself was that the former boybander should probably stick to pop stardom instead of acting.

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But we’re not here to discuss the movie. We’re here to discuss everything around the movie.

Olivia Wilde’s sophomore effort as a director garnered a metric buttload of attention leading up to its release because of a bevy of on-and-off-set drama. Shia LaBeouf was in it, then he wasn’t. Wilde condescendingly called star Florence Pugh “Miss Flo” in a leaked video asking LaBeouf to come back. Pugh, seemingly in retaliation, was then somewhat disruptive during the movie’s press tour in a way that made her seem really cool.

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All in all, Don’t Worry, Darling gave us the greatest kind of conspiracy-mongering: totally harmless and stupid, but very funny. And that was before we all spent a week thinking Harry Styles spit on Chris Pine!

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Bravo to everyone involved here. You did everything except make a good movie.

Adam Levine…hoo boy

Sometimes celebrity drama is really funny. This isn’t one of those times.

Maroon 5 frontman Adam Levine got entangled in some relationship drama earlier this year, but we don’t need to worry about the specifics because we’re here for jokes. All you really need to know is that some of Levine’s DMs got leaked and, well, maybe he should stick to songwriting.

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As you’d expect, this led to plenty of Twitter riffs. Take some embarrassing sexts and transpose them onto other images and you’ve got classic memes.

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Seriously, the jokes write themselves.

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Zoomers won’t get the next one.

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Taking impersonation to a new level

This one is slightly cheating because, while we’re here to celebrate non-Musk Twitter, these next few tweets came as a direct result of Musk’s ownership.

When he briefly let people spend $8/month to get a blue checkmark on their profiles, Musk (either because he didn’t think about it or didn’t care) allowed people to impersonate big brands, often to hilarious effect.

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The one where someone impersonated pharmaceutical brand Eli Lilly and proclaimed that insulin would be free going forward arguably made the most waves on Twitter, but there were so many more.

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Many of them became overt political statements, but some of them were just goofy.

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If only anyone could have seen this coming.

And all the rest

Last but certainly not least, there were a few tweets that didn’t fit into any particular trend or category aside from just being really funny.

First up is this one from ESPN personality Stephen A. Smith, who has made a career out of trolling Dallas Cowboys fans. When the Cowboys lost in the playoffs last January, Smith posted a video that opens with the greatest camera pan we’ve ever seen.

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Next up is a very funny, loving, and scarily accurate tribute to Outkast.

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And finally, a video recording of one of the most important moments in American history.

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Let’s hope Twitter lasts long enough to gift us with a 2023 year in review. If not, well, we’ll all know why.