What happened to Jojo Siwa?

A bare few years back, Jojo Siwa‘s career was thriving. She was among America’s most-watched young stars as she cinched positions on Time‘s most-influential people list and worked to reframe her identity as an adult.

That transition was tough, particularly due to Siwa’s longstanding fame. She started her career on Dance Moms, which initially boosted her to fame and allowed her to branch out and explore her talent as an actress and singer. She’s indulging each of those skills these days, but what once appeared to be the blossoming career of an instant star is starting to look more like a blip on Hollywood’s radar. Siwa has fallen, and fallen fast, and it seems that she has no one to blame but herself.

How did Jojo Siwa go from rising star to infamous pariah?

As recently as 2020, Siwa was among the most exciting young individuals in pop culture. Her dancing career, which blossomed into a career on screen and in music, set her up perfectly to transition from child star into adult leading lady. Siwa’s own ambition, however, may have tripped the young star up. At the time of this writing, Siwa is only 20 years old, so most of her mistakes are a result of youth, a lack of experience, and perhaps an overinflated ego. Many of them could be reversible, but only if Siwa plays her cards right. At the moment, she’s broadly looked at as an arrogant child star who, upon reaching adulthood, repeated the same mistakes we watched adults make with her. And It’s a real shame.

In her early days, Siwa was among Abby Lee Miller’s most talented students and, despite this fact, Abby treated her like last week’s trash. She disparaged Siwa at every turn and then watched with shock as the sparkle-coated young performer rocketed past every other Dance Moms kid to become a millionaire before she ever turned 20. For the briefest of moments, Siwa was on top of the world. Then, she started to slip. She was hit with pushback following the 2021 recall of Jojo’s Juice, a game aimed at children that was revealed to include several inappropriate questions. Siwa responded to the pushback, noting that she had no idea which questions would be included, and ire faded for a while. A few messy breakups damaged her wholesome reputation somewhat, but they weren’t nearly enough to topple the rising star.

Then, in early 2024, revelations about her exploitation of XOMG Pop!, a girl group she started in 2021, put her back in the hot seat. Soon after, Siwa’s official music career was supposed to pop off with the arrival of “Karma,” her 2024 single. Instead, people reacted to the deeply uninspired song with a mix of cringe and pity as they openly wondered just what happened to that talented little girl we first met on season 5 of Dance Moms. These days, at least, she can be found dressing like a water demon and teaching her followers the choreography to “Karma.” Only time will tell what the future holds.