A middle-aged woman from a suburban conservative corner of New Jersey named Joanne Carducci says that prior to the start of 2017, her social media presence was limited to “Mom Facebook.”
However, the election of former president Donald Trump inspired her to explore Twitter and adopt an alter ego to make her political feelings known. Now, she’s a massively influential poster, who can shape discourse across the internet.
Who is JoJo from Jerz?
Tweeting as JoJo from Jerz, Carducci has become a social media celebrity, with more than 914,500 followers since starting her account on Twitter in January 2017. She has developed other online audiences via Instagram (about 56,300 followers), Facebook (23,000 followers), YouTube via the Political Voices Network, and on Substack. She also launched a podcast in July titled, in JoJo from Jerz’s inimitable style, “Are You F’ng Kidding Me?”
On Twitter especially, JoJo from Jerz is known for boiling down complex political issues into short, pithy, earthy statements—sometimes with cutting humor, sometimes with a splash of sweary rage.
Her Twitter bio includes a lot of one- and two-word descriptors to paint a picture of who she is: “Mom. jersey. dem. news junkie. Lebanese. hothead. geek.”
Her Patreon bio professes that she’s “creating snark and a community that destroys right-wing a**holes.”
How did JoJo from Jerz get started on Twitter?
In an exclusive interview with the Daily Dot, Carducci explained, “So I was pretty active on Facebook, even during the primary season and up until the election, with my opinions, which was really kind of like shouting into the void.”
She noted that most of her neighbors in Warren County in the northwest corner of New Jersey are “very red and Republican. So, you know, I was just saying my stuff. And then the election happened. And those very people felt really emboldened to answer back and clap back with lots of vitriol and anger and horrible, hateful things. And I was just looking around my environment. And I’m like, these are not my people. I can’t even express my feelings on this social media app. So I said, ‘What’s this whole Twitter thing?’”
She explored the platform, finding that Twitter personality Molly Jong-Fast had a similar outlook and a relatable style, and set out to try it on her own. She built up to about 1,000 followers in her first year, getting found through being a “reply guy” (in her words) to a number of accounts, including Trump’s.
She was able to build the account from there, developing her personal style, and by her third year had over 100,000 followers on Twitter.
JoJo from Jerz says of her motivations for going online, “I care about climate change. I care about trans rights. I care about, obviously, one of the things that’s mostly my lane, is politics. That’s what I talk about most, Trump in particular right now, because I think he is a threat to our democracy.”
“But there are things this suburban mom lays up at night thinking about; not all suburban moms think about them all this broadly,” she added. “But they might think about gun violence in schools. You know, I think about all those things, but it really stems number one, from being a mom. That is the most important thing in my life. And doing right by my kids is what motivates me more than anything.”
The pinned tweet on her account, dating back to June 2023, simply proclaims, “Maybe someday, women in America will have as many rights as guns do.”
A typical JoJo from Jerz tweet about Trump, one of her favorite subjects to tweet about, from August 21, 2023, reads, “He could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot a blind nun while singing the Russian National Anthem and happy ending hand jobbing Kim Jong Un, stream the video into every household in America at dinner time, and MAGA would love him even more.”
It concludes, “And that is how you know it’s a cult.”
Where can I find her besides Twitter?
She notes that she was encouraged by friends to branch out to other platforms once she hit the 100,000 mark on Twitter, and so she’s launched an account on Instagram, went back to Facebook (with a specific JoJo from Jerz profile), and started a Substack.
She also branched out into podcasting with her Are You F’ng Kidding Me? podcast, launched in June 2023, featuring interviews with journalists and very online critics of right-wing political figures, including Ron Filipowski, Aaron Rupar, Rachel Vindman, and George Conway, or other special guests who are able to speak to issues of the day.
She also made her Daily Beast debut on August 24, 2023, covering the Fox News-hosted first Republican presidential debate of the 2024 campaign.
