From Andrew Tate to Kanye West, these were the most polarizing people on the internet in 2022

Johnny Depp's defamation lawsuit against Amber Heard — and her subsequent counterclaim — was one of the most highly publicized and intensely discussed pieces of litigation this year.

An entire subgenre of TikTokers and internet influencers rose to prominence covering the trial, while a wave of creators gained traction making fancams and compilations in support of Depp or mocking Heard. The internet and influencers responded to the trial overwhelmingly in support of Depp, and the "Justice for Johnny Depp" TikTok hashtag amassed over 21 billion views. Many people shared clips closely dissecting aspects of the case and the trial.

The trial lasted two months and put for the claim that Heard had defamed Depp and ruined his reputation by alleging she was the victim of abuse in a 2018 Washington Post op-ed. The jury ruled largely in favor of Depp, awarding him over $10 million in damages.

Misinformation swarmed across the internet, with a seemingly endless amount of baseless theories, takes, and memes related to Depp and Heard to be found online, and creators profited from taking a hard line in the case.

Kaitlyn Siragusa, better known as Amouranth, is one of the most successful female Twitch streamers of all time. In October, the 29-year-old revealed on stream to her six million followers that she was married, and accused her husband of financial and emotional abuse.

Amouranth said she was "basically living in a fancy prison" and alleged her husband had controlled her finances, threatened to kill her dogs, and pressured her into streaming. Days later, she announced that she was free from her husband, and then said she was taking a break from streaming.

Amouranth's revelations drew a massive wave of support from fans, fellow Twitch streamers, and influencers like Valkyrae and Ethan Klein, who rallied around her.

But there was also a smaller surge of backlash from a mostly male contingent who were upset she had never publicly mentioned her husband. The YouTuber Keemstar sparked derision for a now-deleted tweet accusing her of scamming her fans.

Amouranth has since returned to streaming on Twitch, which she joined in 2016. She initially became known through cosplay content and then "hot tub" streams, a type of stream where creators chill in an inflatable pool and converse with their audience. She also has a large following on OnlyFans, with over 1 million likes.

In the aftermath of the allegations, Insider spoke with multiple women in the streaming and digital modeling realms who said behind-the-scenes exploitation is common and often goes unaddressed in these industries.

Andrew Tate rocketed to viral fame and made headlines out of nowhere halfway through the year for his bombastic comments and sexist claims. The kickboxer-turned-influencer became an icon in the "manosphere" and was known for his male-oriented "self-help" tips advising people how to get rich and be successful.

Tate was frequently accused of misogyny for specific clips of his that went viral, like a video where he said he needed authority over women and another where he said female self-defense is "bullshit" and that women couldn't defend themselves. One university professor called Tate a "one-stop hate shop."

The growing backlash vaulted him further into the spotlight. He made appearances on multiple popular podcasts with influencers like the YouTube prank group NELK and Barstool Sports' Dave Portnoy.

Tate was eventually banned from Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter in August, although he was recently unbanned from the latter after Elon Musk took over the platform.

Tate's content proliferated most on TikTok, where an army of his fans reposted his content and spammed his name in the comment sections of videos, helping boost his notoriety. Despite his ban, Tate's content continued to circulate on the platform thanks to a persistent network of fan accounts with tens of thousands of followers uploading his videos.

Many of the fan accounts encouraged viewers to join "Hustler's University," a training program created by Tate that offered subscribers tips and lessons if they paid $49 a month to join. Critics accused the project of being a scam because they said it employed MLM-like tactics to coerce new members into joining, since they would receive a slice of money if someone signed up through an affiliate link.

The trajectory of Dream shows that in the digital creator realm, anonymity can be a blessing.

After creating content without showing his face for six years, the massive Minecrafter – whose first name is Clay, last name undisclosed – revealed his face for the first time in October to a curious public.

The results have been mixed. Initially, Dream was met with fanfare, with 1.2 million people viewing the reveal video live and an uproarious reception at TwitchCon, where he made his first in-person convention appearance.

After the reveal, grooming allegations were levied against Dream by two different women, who said he sent inappropriate messages when they were underage. He denied the allegations, stating that he engaged in friendly conversation with two women who claimed to be 18 at the time.

"Any attempt to equate these messages to grooming is not only disgusting but is insulting to victims who actually experienced grooming and still have trauma as a result," he wrote.

In 2022, the social media platform Twitter was bought by Elon Musk, Tesla's CEO and richest man in the world. The $44 billion acquisition, first accepted in April by the company's board of directors, concluded at the tail end of October after a protracted, tumultuous legal saga.

Musk's buyout drew both cheers and condemnations. The decision thrilled previously banned far-right users who speculated that they might now be allowed back on the platform under Musk's purported prioritization of "free speech," while researchers grew concerned about the potential increase of baseless conspiracy theories on the platform.

Nearly immediately after Musk's takeover, the website saw a spike in hateful language on the platform, and an organized network of users began spreading anti-Semitic content. An atmosphere of chaos continued as Musk announced massive company layoffs and then pardoned a slew of banned accounts, including former President Donald Trump, who was suspended after the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Musk has been criticized for his loose policies toward hate speech, and incited outrage after he shared a link to an article published by a website known for propagating false claims only days into the acquisition.

Musk has made numerous headlines for non-Twitter stories as well, including his now-ended highly-publicized relationship with the musician Grimes and his comments about the need for higher birth rates and population growth.

The YouTuber Gabbie Hanna has been open about her mental health issues, including bipolar disorder and autism diagnoses, though they appeared to reach a crescendo earlier this year.

In September, Hanna posted more than 100 erratic TikTok videos over the course of 24 hours, which culminated in a police wellness check. During the TikTok streak, Hanna made comments some considered racist and transphobic. She also invited a stranger into her home, Nick Pfeifer, who filmed the events on TikTok before Hanna booted him from her property. She later attributed the events to a manic episode.

Hanna, who rose to fame on Vine and subsequently became a tangential Vlog Squad member beloved for her storytime videos on YouTube, has managed to stay relevant for many years, including highly-viewed forays into music.

But amid a series of feuds with fellow creators -- including Trisha Paytas, Angelika Oles, and Jess Smiles -- Hanna's content has subsequently undergone a more frenetic and philosophical bent, with a focus on painting and music.

Clara Sorrenti, the Twitch streamer known to 54,000 followers as Keffals, found her life on the line this year—forced to flee her native Canada amid an onslaught of swatting attacks.

Sorrenti, who is trans, games and discusses politics on her Twitch account, where she also speaks out against anti-LGBTQ rhetoric. This earned her the ire of fringe forum Kiwi Farms, which has a history of propagating bigotry and harassing trans people.

In August, Sorrenti was arrested at gunpoint after a falsified letter was sent to police, claiming that she'd killed her mother and threatened to murder members of her local city council. The harassment continued even after Sorrenti went into hiding, fleeing to Ireland.

"I have been the target of an intense harassment campaign now for several months," she said in a YouTube video at the time. "I have had friends doxxed, I have had family doxxed…But over the last month, things have been escalating."

However, there is a happy ending to Sorrenti's story. In September, following a campaign to get Kiwi Farms' web host to drop it, the San Francisco tech giant Cloudfare complied, citing imminent danger to human life.

It was a tough year for so-called "wife guys," or men who build their public personas around being in monogamous marriages – with Adam Levine and Ned Fulmer embroiled in successive cheating scandals. In the case of Fulmer – who rose to fame as part of the Try Guys – the consequences have been particularly damning.

In September, Fulmer admitted to having a "consensual workplace relationship" with colleague Alex Herring. The remaining three members of the creator quartet—Keith Habersberger, Zach Kornfeld, and Eugene Lee Yang—promptly severed ties with Fulmer.

The group, which emerged out of BuzzFeed by trying their hands at various viral trends, made the decision in the wake of a "thorough internal review," they said. Habersberger, Kornfeld, and Yang subsequently sat down for a searing recap video titled "what happened," explaining that Fulmer had been digitally removed from pre-filmed videos.

"I don't know that we'll ever be able to fully articulate the pain we feel at this moment," Kornfeld said.

The internet can be a powerful arbiter for justice—though the punishment doesn't always fit the crime.

In January, a viral TikTok about a woman who'd been ghosted led to dozens of others learning that they were being courted by the same suitor—a tall furniture designer now known as West Elm Caleb.

Many of the women commiserated about negative experiences with Caleb. Some felt they'd been "love-bombed," with Caleb promising to name sofas after them before unceremoniously pulling the rug.

What followed was an investigation into Caleb's life, including dating profile and conversation leaks, as well as calls on Instagram for West Elm to fire him. Caleb became a kind of universal symbol for negative dating experiences across the internet—though many felt calls for retribution had spun out of control.

"What it's morphed into is really just public shaming and the absolute humiliation and destruction of this man who we fundamentally don't know that much about and we certainly haven't heard from," the tech and culture reporter Taylor Lorenz said at the time.

The internet was ablaze with discourse and an endless parade of memes after Will Smith infamously slapped Chris Rock at the Oscars in March. Rock had made a joke about the actor's wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, in relation to her alopecia condition.

The response was divided among celebrities and watchers, who feverishly debated the ethics of Smith's whack on social media. Some, like Nicki Minaj and Tiffany Haddish, reacted favorably to Smith's gesture in support of his wife. Others, like Kathy Griffin, shared concerned messages about what Smith's slap could mean for comedians going forward, who might have to worry about audience members feeling emboldened to run up on stage and assault performers.

Multiple meme formats themed after "The Slap" went viral online, including a photo of Smith caught in the middle of slapping Rock and a picture of a very tearful-looking Smith from 2020.

Perhaps no celebrity was more visible and polarizing in 2022 than Kanye West, who recently changed his legal name to Ye. The rapper and entrepreneur seemed to be on a constant descent into the world of baseless conspiracy theories and antisemitic rants.

In the last two months, he has drawn condemnation for a flurry of incidents—falsely claiming George Floyd died of fentanyl, tweeting that he would go "death con 3" on Jewish people, and praising Adolf Hitler and the Nazis in an interview with the right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, among other things.

Ye has also drawn additional criticism for palling around with far-right influencers like Milo Yiannoupolos, who was once a prominent voice on the right, and the white nationalist Nick Fuentes.

In response, in recent months multiple longtime partners including Adidas and Balenciaga ended their collaborations with him.

Fans have abandoned the musician in droves, and the largest Reddit page for Ye supporters converted into a holocaust education center and Taylor Swift appreciate page after the Jones interview. An honorary moderator of the r/Kanye Reddit and longtime Ye fan previously told Insider that the forum was a "bloodbath" of bans and that he didn't support the musician's actions.

Still, many diehard stans refuse to disown their inspiration. The phrase "He Made Graduation," a reference to Ye's beloved third album, trended on Twitter and became a viral meme among unyielding supporters in the last week. There are multiple Instagram accounts with thousands of followers dedicated to rallying around Ye despite the turmoil.