JoJo Siwa vs. the Hate Machine: How a Former Child Star Turned Criticism into Fuel

 

JoJo Siwa has a message for the internet: the backlash won’t break her—if anything, it’s powering her next chapter. In a recent interview, she framed the constant pile-on as a spectator sport—“almost like a sport now,” in her words—making it clear she’s learned to anticipate, metabolize, and outlast the noise. 

Growing up under a microscope

Few pop figures have had their “growing up” televised as publicly as Siwa. From Dance Moms to stadium tours, she evolved on camera—complete with bows, neon, and kid-safe anthems—before pivoting into a more adult, provocative brand. That kind of pivot is guaranteed to draw fire online, but Siwa says she’s accepted the inevitability: the more she changes, the louder the commentary gets. Rather than retreat, she’s reframed the criticism as background static and kept moving. 

The rebrand everyone had an opinion about

Her “new era” exploded into view with “Karma,” a slick, darker dance-pop cut that signaled a deliberate break from bubblegum. The rollout drew think pieces and hot takes about whether she was trying “too hard to shock,” but it also underlined something important: Siwa is staking a claim on adult creative agency, even if it destabilizes the image people once projected onto her. 

That same impulse—naming what she wants her lane to be—also fueled headlines when she talked about “gay pop.” After blowback, she clarified that she wasn’t declaring an invention so much as pointing to a missing label for a very real community of artists and fans. In short: she wants a recognized space where queer pop thrives, not a crown for herself. 

When punchlines become pressure

Pop culture hasn’t exactly handled her transformation with kid gloves. Sketch comedy parodies and social-media snark have followed every costume change, choreography tweak, and quote. Some of it is playful; a lot of it edges into bullying—something Siwa has confronted head-on at shows and in interviews. At one performance, when a heckler booed, she stopped and addressed it directly before moving on—a small but telling data point about her willingness to own the room even when it turns hostile. 

“It’s almost like a sport now”

The most striking part of her recent comments is how matter-of-fact they are. Siwa isn’t denying the hate exists, nor is she sugarcoating its intensity. She’s categorizing it—naming a pattern where spectators gather, comment sections swell, and algorithms reward outrage. Calling it a “sport” flips the narrative: if the hate is a game, she doesn’t have to be its unwilling participant. She can refuse to play by its rules. 

The strategy behind the stance

What does refusing to “play” look like for a pop act? Three things:

1. Outwork the noise. Release, rehearse, perform, repeat. The most reliable rebuttal to performative outrage is consistent output and tight shows—things even critics have to acknowledge. That’s been her pattern throughout the year. 

2. Narrate your own arc. Clarifying her “gay pop” comments showed a useful muscle: correcting the record without spiraling into defensiveness. In a media environment that rewards misquotes, controlling your own messaging is survival. 

3. Confront in real time when needed. Addressing a boo mid-set might sound risky, but it also reframes the moment: the artist is a person in a room, not just a screen absorbing anonymous commentary. That humanizes her—and sometimes disarms the mob. 

Why people love to hate—and why that’s changing

Part of the fascination with Siwa is whiplash. Audiences who first met her as a children’s idol can feel betrayed when she steps outside those guardrails. But that discomfort says more about our expectations than about her. We often want eternal continuity from artists who are, inconveniently, human. And when a once-wholesome figure rejects the script, the internet can feel licensed to punish the deviation—especially a young queer woman openly claiming her sexuality and agency. The backlash becomes a ritual; the feeds reward it. Siwa’s “sport” metaphor catches that loop in a single line. 

At the same time, there’s evidence the outrage economy is losing its monopoly. Even as critiques piled up, “Karma” streamed into eight-figure view counts and her rebrand became the year’s pop-culture Rorschach test: everyone saw what they wanted—sellout, rebel, try-hard, pioneer—while the numbers quietly did what numbers do. You don’t have to like the reinvention to admit it’s working on its own terms.

The takeaway: agency over approval

Siwa’s latest stance won’t convert every detractor, and it doesn’t have to. The point isn’t unanimous approval; it’s authorship. Casting the backlash as a game robs it of inevitability and moral weight. It’s crowd behavior, not cosmic judgment. And once you see it that way, you can choose your response: mute it, dance through it, or sometimes, stare it down.

For an artist who spent her formative years performing a version of herself that made other people comfortable, this chapter feels like necessary turbulence. Growth always looks messy from the outside; it reads as audacity before it reads as evolution. Siwa is betting that the long arc of her career will favor the latter.

If you’ve already decided how to feel about JoJo Siwa, nothing here will change your mind. But if you’re willing to judge the work on the stage rather than the noise around it, the story gets more interesting. She’s not asking for a free pass—just the freedom to make the music she wants, wear what she wants, and refuse to become a character in someone else’s sport.