JoJo Siwa Comes Out and gets ‘Swatted’

JoJo Siwa, the 17 year old Nickelodeon and Dance Moms star known for her crazy collection of bows and colorful outfits has recently come out as a member of the LGBTQ+ community. She took to TikTok when coming out, posting a video of her lip-syncing to Lady Gaga’s hit song Born This Way. 

The bridge of the song says, “No matter gay, straight, or bi, lesbian, transgender life. I'm on the right track, baby I was born to survive. No matter black, white, or beige, Chola or orient made. I'm on the right track, baby I was born to be brave!” The song on TikTok has been used by many members of the LGBTQ+ community. People in the comments of her video, which now has over 39 million views, expressed love and acceptance. Many popular creators such as James Charles, Bretman Rock, Colleen Ballinger and many others congratulated her on coming out and said how proud they were of her. 

Siwa took to Instagram to share how law enforcement was sent to her house a few days after coming out. She posted a 14 minute video with her videographer friend, Nate Javier. She stated, “Our house got swatted. We were at our house and, all of a sudden, there was a whole bunch of police telling us to come outside the house. And we didn’t know why. We went outside, hands up like you have to. The police were saying that somebody had called and made a claim and then all of a sudden paparazzi came around the corner. It’s called swatting, where the media will actually call the police so that way you have to come out outside your house.”

She later said, “I feel bad because there [were] about 50 police outside my house and those police could have had [a] much better time spent somewhere else actually helping somebody instead of dealing with a fake claim from paparazzi. Literally just come ring my doorbell, paparazzi. I’ll wave to you from my window.” Siwa said she recorded the incident and plans to go into more detail about it in a video on her Youtube Channel.

The act of ‘swatting’ can be incredibly dangerous. It involves calling authorities with a fake tip about a hostage situation or other major incident that would need a large police presence. Back in 2017, a swatting incident became deadly. A man was mistakenly killed during a swatting incident after someone who had been playing Call of Duty with him called authorities with fake information as revenge.