Cancel culture: What celebrities were canceled in 2022?

It’s been five years since the term “cancel culture” began to crop up regularly on social media, two years since Pew Research Center began asking Americans about it. And although there’s still a debate over whether “cancellation” is unfair, mob-driven punishment or simply consequences for one’s actions, calls for celebrities to be canceled have continued throughout 2022 — and there have even been efforts to cancel stores and a law school.

Here’s a look at the faces of cancel culture throughout the year, and what happened to the people involved.

January

Evangeline Lilly, who became famous for playing Kate Austen in the ABC television series “Lost,” was the first person to be threatened with cancellation in 2022.

Lilly came under fire after attending a rally against COVID-19 mandates and writing on Instagram “nobody should ever be forced to inject their body with anything, against their will …”

The controversy doesn’t seem to have had any lasting effect on her career; Lilly is back as Hope Van Dyne in the Marvel movie “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,” expected in February, and has been talking about wanting to be in an all-female Avengers movie.

February

Superstar podcaster Joe Rogan is still on the air, and “The Joe Rogan Experience” was the most popular podcast of 2022 despite efforts to get him canceled in February. Rogan’s critics said he spread COVID-19 misinformation by giving a platform to people with controversial views.

Singer-songwriter Neil Young announced in late February that he was taking his work off Spotify in protest of Rogan remaining there, and other entertainers and podcasters, including Joni Mitchell and Brene Brown, followed. The controversy did result in some changes. Variety reported, “Earlier this year, Spotify removed 70 episodes “The Joe Rogan Experience” that included ‘racially insensitive language,’ which Spotify CEO Daniel Ek said were pulled at Rogan’s request.”

Although Rumble offered Rogan $100 million to leave Spotify, he stayed, and in 2022, had the most popular podcast not only in the U.S., but in the world, according to Variety.

March

It was known as “the slap heard around the world” and it was personally and professionally devastating for actor Will Smith, despite his apology for assaulting Chris Rock on stage after the comedian made a joke about Smith’s wife.

What happened to Smith doesn’t fit the most common interpretation of cancel culture — being personally or professionally shunned because of unpopular beliefs — but the plunge in Smith’s popularity and opportunities resulted in people saying he was canceled.

Meanwhile, HBO host Bill Maher said that Smith’s action itself was “cancel culture encapsulated” — because it began with a joke and then escalated to fury. “This is what happens a lot with cancel stuff. At first: ‘Oh, it’s funny.’ And then you look around: ‘Oh wait, I’m supposed to be offended.’ And then there’s the [subsequent] overreaction. He was like the Twitter mob come alive,” Maher said.

April

A perennial target of cancellation, actor Chris Pratt surfaced again in April after the teaser for “Thor: Love and Thunder” was released. The reason: grumbling about Pratt’s religious beliefs — he is a Christian — including the erroneous charge that he attends a controversial church. But his Avengers costars and “Guardians of the Galaxy” director James Gunn defended Pratt, quickly shutting down his critics.

And the website of conservative comedian Steven Crowder observed earlier this month that a Twitter mob hasn’t tried to cancel Pratt since new owner Elon Musk laid off half of the company’s employees: “With no one to cherry-pick a few tweets to create the illusion the internet hates Chris Pratt, the internet doesn’t hate Chris Pratt.”

May

The only person canceled more than Pratt might be Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson, but like Pratt and Rogan, Peterson is doing fine, thank you, in part because of his new affiliation with The Daily Wire. (This is the conservative media company that says it uncanceled actress Gina Carano by partnering with her.)

In May, Peterson started a firestorm on social media when he said that a plus-sized model in Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit issue was “Not beautiful. And no amount of authoritarian tolerance is going to change that.” The next month, he got suspended by Twitter for misgendering trans actor Elliott Page.

He was reinstated by Musk in November.

June

MyPillow founder and CEO Mike Lindell said he was canceled in June when Walmart stopped selling his products in their physical stores. Lindell, an ardent Donald Trump supporter who believes Trump won the 2020 election, said the retailer told him the products didn’t meet their “customer satisfaction standards,” the New York Post reported, but Lindell called it “cancel culture” and promptly canceled Walmart in return, saying that they “would never get to sell MyPillows again.”

As of this writing, MyPillow products are available on Walmart’s website, as well as Lindell’s book “What are the Odds? From Crack Addict to CEO.”

July

Comedian Dave Chappelle was literally canceled in July when a venue in Minneapolis refused to host a scheduled show over what critics said were transphobic jokes. The show went on — just at another location.

The comedian has previously shown that he is impervious to cancellation. In 2021, when there were calls to cancel Chappelle over jokes in his Netflix special “The Closer,” he told an appreciative crowd, “If this is what being canceled is like, I love it.”

His “In Your Dreams” tour, which continues through February, recently made headlines when Chappelle invited Elon Musk onstage, and Musk was booed by some members of the audience.

August

Actress Sydney Sweeney stirred up social media haters in August after posting photos on Instagram that showed someone wearing a “Blue Lives Matter” shirt to a family event, and wearing hats similar to Donald Trump’s signature “Make America Great Again” ballcap.

The hats were actually a parody that read “Make Sixty Great Again” — it was Sweeney’s mom’s 60th birthday. The actress expressed surprise that anyone would turn a fun event into an “absurd political statement.” But that was not enough to mollify her critics, one of whom snipped, “Then you should’ve selected other pictures to post that wouldn’t be left up to interpretation in this manner,” according to People magazine.

September

Cancel culture isn’t just about people — and it isn’t just something that happens to conservatives.

Yale Law School graduates were canceled in September by U.S. Circuit Judge James Ho, who said he would no longer hire clerks from Yale, which he says is rife with cancel culture aimed at conservatives. Ho and another judge who said she would join him have since said they hope that their boycott can be averted; another dozen have said they would join them.

October

Kanye West, who legally changed his name to Ye, has been canceled multiple times: for his support of former President Donald Trump, for erratic behavior like interrupting Taylor Swift at an MTV awards show and for wearing a “White Lives Matter” shirt. But some people are saying that his latest cancellation will stick since it’s for bizarre antisemitic statements, such as tweeting in October he was “going death con 3 [sic] On JEWISH PEOPLE” (for which his account was suspended) and later telling Alex Jones “I like Hitler.”

He’s reportedly lost over $1 billion in deals since October, and while some people note Ye’s struggles with mental health, he’s about as canceled right now as a celebrity can get.

November

Cancel culture aimed for actress Candace Cameron Bure after she spoke of her Christian faith in interview with The Wall Street Journal in November and said she expects that the Great American Family network “will keep traditional marriage at its core.”

After being called a bigot and a hypocrite, the Hallmark Channel alumna wrote on Instagram that she didn’t mean to hurt or offend anyone. “I am called to love all people, and I do,” she wrote.

Meanwhile, the fashion company Balenciaga was canceled by people who were upset by a disturbing advertising campaign that featured children holding teddy bears dressed in sexually suggestive gear. Backlash came from celebrities as well; Alexa Demie, a star of the teen show “Euphoria” on HBO, “unfollowed Balenciaga on Instagram and deleted all her Balenciaga-related social media posts,” Newsweek reported.

December

Cancel culture quieted down in December but for one notable attempt: Some Generation Z influencers on TikTok tried to cancel Santa Claus, saying that growing up in a Santa-friendly household would be ultimately traumatizing for children.

Like most attempts at cancellation, this one failed to get widespread traction. In a Deseret News/HarrisX poll conducted earlier this month, more than three-quarters of respondents say they teach (or plan to teach) their children about Santa Claus.

So Santa, like Joe Rogan, it appears cannot be canceled. We’ll have to wait a year to see what happens with Balenciaga and Ye.