Jojo Siwa: The Internet’s Court Jester

A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein

Matt Bernstein

Society & Culture, News Commentary, News

4.9 • 2.2K Ratings

🗓️ 25 July 2025

⏱️ 92 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Jojo Siwa has been a lot of things: an eleven-year-old abused on television for public entertainment, a tween merchandising mogul with a billion dollar brand, Nickelodeon’s first out gay child star, and most recently, a dollar store trad wife. Behind the facade of endlessly shapeshifting court jester, though, Jojo Siwa is a 22-year-old human who has not known life without cameras and a momager since she was nine. Today, Kat Tenbarge and I do some good ole (queer) child star anthropology — and make the case that we, the viewers, are not morally neutral for tuning in. Listen to bonus episodes on Patreon! Thanks to today’s sponsors! Work smarter, not harder, with Factor meals ready in two minutes at https://www.factormeals.com/fruity50off Get 15% off a cuter, more sustainable way to clean at https://www.blueland.com/fruity. Read Kat’s work at Spitfire News. Find me on Instagram. Find A Bit Fruity on Instagram. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Well, actually, can I start by saying, have you listened to the Betty Davis-Ey's cover that was put on Spotify? I sure have. Like, it's not that bad. It's not that bad. I think it's like, especially in the beginning, I actually think it's kind of good. And then it gets into more auto-tune and it gets a little like, rough around the edges. Yeah, there's a lot of pitch correction there. But you know what? She did what she had to do.
0:01.4	Everyone needs to chill out. about her on the edges. Yeah, there's a lot of pitch correction there, but you know what? She did what she had to do. Everyone
0:21.8	needs to chill out.
0:28.7	Hello, hello, and welcome to A Bit Fruity, the show where sometimes we talk about fascism and other times we talk about
0:37.5	Jojo Siwa
0:39.9	Jojo Siwa
0:39.9	Jojo Siwa calls her boyfriend's balls
0:46.9	Jimmy and Timmy.
0:49.6	And the reason I know that is because any time the former child star who's had her
0:57.6	brain and body commodified for mass consumption since she was nine years old does anything.
1:03.5	There's an entire cottage industry of both mainstream tabloid news outlets and content creators
1:09.9	devoted to making sure that as many people as
1:13.4	possible have as strong of feelings as possible about it. So today, I'm going to give you mine.
1:21.2	Jojo Siwa is a 22-year-old who has been a lot of things, a bubbly reality TV child star, a 13-year-old
1:29.1	merchandising mogul, a 16-year-old selling out arenas built for pop stars. The reason kids' parents
1:35.9	tuned into Nickelodeon and the reason kids' parents boycotted Nickelodeon. A lesbian icon,
1:41.6	a renounced former lesbian icon.
1:50.1	But more than anything, she has made a lot of people, a lot of money.
1:58.7	Today, I want to talk about Jojo Siwa, both the person and the person-shaped sight upon which millions of people have for now more than a decade projected
2:02.0	their cultural anxieties about girlhood, gender, sexuality, and growing up. And if I do this
2:09.1	episode justice, I hope that we can all walk away feeling good about bringing the temperature
2:14.4	down on the discourse around Jojo Siwa. To help me do that is, of course,
	...

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