JoJo Siwa showed up on “Saturday Night Live.” Well, it was comedian Chloe Fineman impersonating JoJo, but she looked just like her these days — black makeup, black rhinestones, black lipstick, black leather.

“I’m a bad girl now!” Fineman exclaimed, mocking Siwa’s recent rebrand. “Yeah, it’s a pretty big change. I used to be way more sparkles and now I’m black sparkles.”

Then, she remarked sarcastically, “I’m 20 and gay! I’m the first gay girl in the world! Bet you never met a gay girl before!”

Upon dropping her new single and walking red carpets as a “bad girl” version of herself — trading the giant bows and candy store aesthetics for black and blue rhinestones and Kiss-esque makeup — the internet has had a field day poking fun at the former child star. The totally cool, not-at-all weird dance routines on TikTok gave social media users a laugh, while the grrs, grunts and grins made people roll their eyes.

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But this appears to be just JoJo being JoJo.

For Siwa, ditching the brightly colored outfits that defined her early career had a purpose — she wanted to pull a Miley Cyrus or a Britney Spears and leave the childhood star branding behind to become something new in the eyes of the public. Her new target audience has mostly hate-watched her song’s music video to 33 million views and (briefly) the top spot on YouTube’s trending music category. But even they aren’t completely sold on her. A 2012 version of her song sung by another artist out-charted her version on iTunes, and she lost more than 22,000 Instagram followers in the last month.

Of course, social media experts and content creators understand that this is par for the course for JoJo Siwa. This recent turn might be part of Siwa’s plan, an attempt to rebrand herself with silly, eye-rolling eccentricities that stir up conversation and some free marketing. After all, Siwa has always been a little different.

The rise of JoJo

Siwa didn’t always have an uneven relationship with the internet. The Omaha native became a household name as a child star and entrepreneur after her time on Lifetime reality shows, first as a 9-year-old on “Abby’s Ultimate Dance Competition” and soon after as a cast member on “Dance Moms,” a show that followed the drama as competition dancers rehearsed and competed while their moms watched.

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On both shows, she wasn’t particularly loved by her dance teacher, and she was made fun of for her speech impediment and brash personality. But she took the high road, releasing the anti-bullying anthem “Boomerang” in 2016 and securing a book deal in 2017 and a clothing line at J.C. Penney in 2018, adding to her successful bow brand. Two years later, she was deemed one of Time magazine’s most influential people.

“JoJo Siwa is a ray of sunshine in a world that seems scary right now,” Kim Kardashian wrote about Siwa for Time in 2020. “As a parent, you want your kids to admire positive figures. There’s no one more positive than JoJo.”

Since that time, she’s amassed 11 million followers on Instagram and 45 million followers on TikTok. In her home tours posted to YouTube over the years, she’s shown off walls of bows, a dedicated room full of her own merchandise and enough bright colors to make Skittles look dull.

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But success has also brought controversy. JoJo’s Juice, a JoJo Siwa card game released through Nickelodeon and manufacturer Spin Master in 2018, was removed from store shelves after parents said some of the game cards were “inappropriate” for its advertised age group of players 6 and up.

Some more problems appeared to emerge for Siwa as she extended her cloud of influencing over others. Leigha Sanderson, a former member of the group XOMG Pop!, and her mother, Anjie, told Rolling Stone for a story in February that the Siwas on multiple occasions hurled insults at the girls while managing them. (The Siwas denied the allegations through their lawyer.)

Most recently, Siwa, now 20, had been teasing a new era. “No one has made this dramatic of a change yet,” she said in a Billboard interview. “No one has made, in my generation, this extreme of a switch, and I am the first of the generation. It is very scary. But someone’s got to do it.”

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Then came ‘Karma’

On April 5, Siwa released her new single, “Karma,” a boppy pop jam about regretting infidelity. But the song came with a music video that really showed what JoJo had planned with her rebrand. Her face was painted with Gene Simmons-influenced makeup and her lollipop-colored outfits were darkened with cool-colored rhinestones.

Siwa had seemingly traded in the bows, the bubble gum and the brightly colored glitter for … uh, darkbadgirlmatureadultsomethingsomething.

And of course, like many things these days, “Karma” became its own thing.

JoJo posted multiple TikToks of her doing a snippet of the “Karma” dance choreography with so much passion and energy that commenters were aghast. “if i saw this outside my house, id scream,” wrote one TikTok user. Another joked, “I think my Karma is having to listen to this song.”

Compare that with how people felt when choreographer Richy Jackson did the same dance number. The Lady Gaga choreographer who has worked with Siwa for years was widely praised for his moves. “ok but Richie Jackson is slaying,” one commenter wrote. Another said, “Seeing the choreographer, it all makes sense now. He’s amazing. But when he performs every move is very clean.”

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In addition to the debate over her dance routine, commenters and social media critics were quick to poke fun at her new look and style — deeming it something a kid would consider to be an adult outfit. Others put it a little more cleanly — cringey, uncomfortable and just ick.

There were also rumors that Siwa might have taken the song from Cyrus and Brit Smith, both of whom allegedly were offered the song in the early 2010s. Smith, whose 2012 version surfaced on TikTok, then released the song on streaming platforms with the name “Karma’s a B----.” The song rose up the iTunes chart and briefly surpassed Siwa’s song in April.

Siwa told TMZ that she didn’t steal the song because, well, music apparently can’t be stolen. “What happens is people write songs, and then, they don’t do anything with them. Then, a few years later, it makes sense for another artist,” she said. “I did not steal anything. There’s no such thing as stealing.”

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“‘Karma’ makes you listen, ‘Karma’ makes you ask, ‘Karma’ makes you confused. So, whether people like it or not, marketing plan worked,” she added.

‘It’s called “gay pop”’

And if that wasn’t enough, some took issue with Siwa saying she invented the idea of “gay pop” — a music genre generally by and for people in the LGBTQ+ community. Siwa told Billboard that she told her record label about a new era of music she wanted to introduce, which led to her comeback. “I said, ‘I want to start a new genre of music.’ And they said, ‘What do you mean?’ I said, ‘Well, it’s called ‘gay pop.’”

The problem: Gay pop has arguably been around for decades, and it’s still alive and well. Elton John, Madonna, Lady Gaga and dozens of others have been credited with crafting gay pop classics, and artists such as Kim Petras and Troye Sivan have released modern hits in the subgenre. Several people deemed Siwa as disrespectful for claiming she invented the genre. Popular artists Tegan and Sara, stars of the gay pop genre, reacted to Siwa’s comments on TikTok, as did Charli XCX.

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Siwa walked back the claim that she invented “gay pop” shortly after the backlash. “I definitely am not the inventor of ‘gay pop,’ for sure not. But I do want to be a piece in making it bigger than it already is.”

‘This is kind of just who she is’

Okay, so here we have this former internet darling, known for eccentric yet gleeful dance moves and smiles, accused of stealing music and taking credit for an entire genre of pop. She’s now been meme-ified into oblivion and reviled as cringe incarnate. A potential resurgence for a young child star seemed to flop.

“Audiences felt a little bit of that bait and switch,” said Hannah Neuman, who critiques pop culture on TikTok to more than 415,000 followers. “They thought they were going to get something big from her, and then it ended up just kind of still being Jojo Siwa.”

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“When she promised a rebrand, people thought they were going to get this version of her that was just a lot less — less costume, less jewels, more raw,” Neuman said. “She just is very comfortable being as big as possible. And that might not be everybody’s cup of tea.”

But maybe that’s the point. Maybe JoJo is just JoJo. This is who she is. An oddball, a little eccentric, fun. “She drives around a car with her face all over it. I don’t think it should come as much of a shock to people,” said TikTok creator Kai Cameron of Siwa’s new era. “This is kind of just who she is.”

“There’s something kind of fun about someone who’s just being just totally themselves,” said Cameron, who posted multiple videos of himself impersonating Siwa.

Regardless, Siwa is still the subject of conversation on social media. Her recent run might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but at least she’s what people are talking about when they spill it.

“It’s very hard to win,” when it comes to rebrands, said Cameron, the TikTok content creator. “I think the whole point is to make people speak about it.”

Or maybe Siwa has been listening to Kim Kardashian all this time.

“At some point,” Kardashian wrote about then-17-year-old Siwa for Time in 2020, “she’ll evolve and grow up a little bit, and that’s O.K. The people who love and support her will always be there. Live in the moment. Have fun.”

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