"The Milwaukee metropolitan area has been transformed into a game of Grand Theft Auto wherein the Kia Boyz are preying on the owners to steal their cars in droves."

"It's because someone figured out - teenagers - how easy the cars were to steal, and it spread like wildfire through various social media outlets," - James Barton, Attorney. _{(Kraemer, 2023)}

In the early 2020s an enormous wave of thefts targeting Kia and Hyundai cars swept the United States. Many of the thieves, calling themselves ‘Kia Boyz’, have taken to posting content boasting of their exploits to Tiktok and other social media platforms. The press has called this phenomenon the ‘Kia Challenge’.

A bad idea.

Between 2015 and 2021 Kia-Hyundai chose to remove immobilisers in 14 popular cars in the United States _{(Davis, 2022)}. Designed to protect against hotwiring, immobilisers are simple circuits that prevent a car from starting without a key in the ignition. Immobilisers have been legally required in all new cars sold in Australia, Canada, and several European countries since the early 2000s, and are present in over 90% of cars sold in the United States _{(Gordon, 2023).}

Given that the cars were designed to have immobilisers for international markets, this created a unique security vulnerability to a very simple attack - by physically removing the keyhole, it is possible to turn the key mechanism and start the car. Conveniently, the mechanism protrudes out in a size that approximates a standard USB cable _{(Stumpf, 2022)}.

Kia’s decision has endangered potentially five million vehicles to theft _{(Carfacts, 2024)}. As the company began to face the first round of lawsuits, they stated that they ‘believe these vehicles are fully compliant with federal anti-theft requirements’ _{(Kraemer, 2023)}, but provided a free upgrade program combining physical parts and software updates to solve the security flaw. The rollout is as of yet incomplete, and Kia/Hyundai models continue to be targeted and damaged considerably in attempted thefts even if the updates prevent it _{(Hodge, 2022)}. For this reason State Farm, one of the largest insurers in the United States, dropped coverage for all affected models produced between 2016-2021 in several states _{(Katje, 2023)}.

The Kia Boyz

At some point in the late 2010s and early 2020s, thefts of Kia and Hyundai cars began to increase in ways that indicate patterns of targeted behaviour. The first city where this pattern emerged appears to be Milwaukee, a Wisconsin city of half a million located 90 minutes from Chicago, but clear growth in thefts of Kia/Hyundai models is visible across the entire country more or less simultaneously, in states as far away as Colorado and Texas _{(Gordon, 2023)}.

What's truly surprising, however, is the enthusiasm shown by many of the criminals, who have taken to posting videos of their exploits on social media and calling themselves ‘Kia Boyz’. While many accounts have been banned, a search on tiktok reveals approximately 110 active Kia Boyz accounts _{(Tiktok,
n.d.)}. Most of these videos show groups of teenage boys driving Kias with a surprising disregard for their own freedom and safety and an even greater indifference to the car being stolen itself, with the destroyed steering column characteristic of the ‘hack’ often proudly on display alongside items found inside the vehicle _{(216kiaboyz, 2023)}. Despite the danger, the tone is generally quite light hearted, showing the ‘Boyz’ laughing as they joyride, though some content is clearly intended to be more intimidating and depict them as active gang members. The most immediate comparison that comes to mind is the imagery surrounding the ‘Drill’ Hip Hop subgenre that emerged from Chicago gang culture in the early 2010s - youthful, nihilistic, and often surprisingly specific about actual crimes being committed, which are frequently alluded to on social media.

Kia Boyz content long predates the mid-2022 viral spread of the ‘Kia Challenge’, with some videos found as early as 2020 _{(H & G, 2022)}. Though some videos have a degree of popularity, particularly in the wake of the viral spread of the ‘Kia Challenge’ and a few accounts have followers in the hundreds of thousands, most of this content is anonymous, obscure, and interchangeable, and no ‘Kia Boyz’ account has had real lasting social media popularity. As with Drill rap, it feels as though the assumed audience is familiar enough with the culture surrounding it that no explanation is necessary, and widespread popularity is a distant concern if it is present at all.

_{(Kiaboyz_.2, 2023) Click video to play or unmute/mute.}

_{(216kiaboyz, 2023) Click video to play or unmute/mute.}

In other words, this content is a narrow glimpse into the social media bubble of teen criminals, rather than the cause of the crime. In Wisconsin, the FBI’s official statistics of car theft arrests from 2019-2022 shows a clear trend of growth being driven by a teen demographic. Looking at the distribution across time, however, seems to not show a significant change to the demographic distribution of car theft results. Though teenage boys grow to 50% over the 2019-2022 period, this trend does not appear to be significantly different to the normal fluctuations that are visible just a few years earlier in the same statistics _{(Federal
Bureau of Investigation, 2023)}. Also, given that in Wisconsin car theft is only a misdemeanour for offenders under the age of 18, it is likely that the increase is partially driven by the same individuals being arrested repeatedly _{(Mcgee, 2022)}.

The two available interviews with self-identified ‘Kia Boyz’, by Youtube accounts ‘TommyB’ and ‘Channel 5’ seem to indicate that many are close to the bottom of an existing organised crime hierarchy: in Channel 5’s ‘CT Kia Boyz’ video the young men interviewed describe their scheme as stealing Kias and then selling them on for as little as $100 to presumably more serious criminals seeking getaway cars for robberies and shootings. The young men in the video are also shown purchasing and selling small quantities of marijuana, and attempt to sell DVDs found in one car for $20 each _{(Callaghan, 2024)}.

The Kia Challenge

The ‘Kia Challenge’ was never a real social media trend, and this is reflected clearly in the google trend data that tracks the frequency of associated search terms. A true cultural phenomenon would show consistent interest, but with the term ‘Kia Challenge’ a few events connected to media coverage clearly dominate everything else in terms of traffic. Terms related to the mechanics behind the ‘hack’, which would presumably be of use to actual criminals, like ‘How to steal a Kia’ and ‘Kia USB’, show negligible interest that also rises and falls with traffic _{(Google Trends, 2024)}.

Instead, interest in Kia thefts is concentrated around a media narrative with five key events, three of which are clearly visible as peaks in search interest:

In May 2022 Milwaukee content creator ‘Tommy G’ interviewed a group of self-identified Kia Boyz, in a 15-minute video released on his Youtube Channel that treats the thefts as a crime story and not a social media trend _{(Mcgee, 2022)}. One of the young men in the video is quickly arrested afterwards, and clips from the video, though relatively obscure at the time, are frequently referenced in subsequent reporting _{(Bentley, 2022)}.

The first real viral peak in search interest is in July 2022, when Tiktok user ‘Robbierayyyy’ uploaded a video where he demonstrates the flaw. Though this video has since been deleted and lost, contemporary coverage describes it as an adult man demonstrating the ‘hack’ in his own car with a bewildered tone, and not a ‘Kia Boyz’ video or a social media ‘challenge’. This original video generated a sizable wave of responses on tiktok, which from there began to slip into traditional media _{(H & G, 2022)}. The first recorded use of the phrase ‘Kia Challenge’ appears around then, in an article on FOX59, an Indiana-based local FOX news affiliate. From there the narrative of a tiktok trend quickly becomes apparent, totally eclipsing the prior scant coverage of the ‘Kia Boyz’, and the premise of the articles shifts from noting rising thefts to despairing at a tiktok trend gone wrong _{(Kendall, 2023)}. ‘Robbierayyyy’, in a later video that has also been deleted, is seen watching media coverage of the ‘Kia Challenge’, which he laughs off as absurd _{(H & G, 2022)}.

“The "Kia Challenge" on TikTok has gone viral. People, usually teens, break into Kia's hot wire them, drive them, before abandoning the car in a random location. The trend has already proved deadly, police say.

"These are challenges that are being introduced by people who do not care about the ramifications on you if you participate in this challenge," IMPD Sgt. Genae Cook said.” _{(Kendall, 2023)}

The second, largest peak is in October 2022, when four young men in upstate New York were killed in an accident driving a stolen Kia. Aside from acknowledging this event, media coverage was still very similar to the first peak _{(Couto, 2022)}.

Past this point, searches for the term ‘Kia Challenge’ fall away to essentially nothing, superseded by the more neutral ‘Kia Thefts’ term, which shows broader national-level media coverage in outlets like National Public Radio that is much less sensationalistic _{(Davis, 2022)}. From this point the focus shifts to the large lawsuits being levelled against Kia: first from the city of Milwaukee, which reached a $200 million dollar settlement in May 2023 _{(Kraemer, 2023)}, and the second a class action lawsuit, combining efforts from hundreds of plaintiffs, which reached a $150 million dollar settlement in February 2024 and is visible as the third peak in search interest _{(Limehouse, 2024)}. Looking at the location data for these searches for the term ‘Kia Thefts’ in this period shows them as concentrated in the midwest, close to the cities of Chicago and Milwaukee where (likely) most of the thefts took place, indicating that some of the interest is from the victims of the crimes themselves.

The Power of Tiktok

The media’s fixation on the Kia challenge is best understood in the context of the broader cultural response to Tiktok and social media as a whole, and clear parralels can be seen in past coverage of much more innocuous events, like the 2021 Sea Shanty Craze.

As a platform, Tiktok’s design eschews the typical social media experience by showing users a feed of video content selected by an algorithm that they only indirectly control by choosing to watch more content that they find engaging. In this environment anything that provokes a visceral enough reaction to hold a user’s attention for long enough can be successful, positive or negative. An adorable cat video can be just as effective as a mostly-nude woman, a bizarrely unpalatable meal, or a group of teenagers speeding in a stolen car. Viral content is often a discourse, beginning with positive engagement from a small group, then widespread shock and derision when it reaches a wider audience. By the time the broader media has caught up to the trend, this distinction is often lost and all the traffic is treated as sincere positive interest.

Sea Shanties aptly demonstrated this tendency in mid-2021, when a cover of New Zealand folk song ‘The Wellerman’ had a sudden viral success and spawned hundreds of remixes, parodies and responses, before falling out of popularity again less than a month later. Mainstream media coverage of this trend treated it as both a curiosity and a potential sign of a broader cultural moment, spawning several articles where journalists speculated that a single 19th century whaling ballad meme allowed a lockdown-harried Generation Z to ‘find delight in a centuries-old music genre meant to bind separate bodies together into one shared, cooperative action’ _{(VanArendonk, 2021)}. Did Generation Z actually develop an interest in Sea Shanties? No. The Google trend data shows two peaks: one for the ‘Wellerman’ memes in early 2021, and another when several Sea Shanty festivals attempted to capitalise on this moment in mid 2022 _{(Google Trends, 2024)}. The memes were never going to last, but the temptation to run articles speculating about their provenance proved irresistible.

The Kia Challenge is essentially a version of this narrative coupled with the typical local news fixation on crime. Any evidence of anything like a Tiktok trend centred around automobile theft happening anywhere in the world is enough to run an article speculating about the possibility of it happening in your backyard, to the point that Australian local news outlets like Channel 9 _{(Nagel, 2023)} and Channel 7 ₍₂₀₂₂₎ have run reporting about the Kia Challenge that is identical to its American siblings, despite the presence of immobilisers in all Australian vehicles making anything like it impossible. When the viral traffic fell away and it became untenable to keep speculating about teenagers stealing cars because of memes, the coverage of Kia theft turned to much more typical crime coverage focusing on the victims and the structural causes.

The Kia theft phenomena is a powerful demonstration of how social media, when coupled with traditional media, can distort our perceptions of reality. Obvious corporate malfeasance creates a wave of opportunistic property crime, to the point that the criminals post content celebrating it. Then the rest of the world, seeing only the content, hallucinates a scarier version of events where the content is itself the cause. Life in the 2020s.

_{(Evans, 2020) Click video to play or unmute/mute.}

_{(Stewart, 2021) Click video to play or unmute/mute.}