Interlinking complex systems

A fascinating concatenation of vague things to be worried about coalescing into a real world consequence.  If you are worried about cheapskate corporations, badly raised kids, vestigial law enforcement, an anemic judicial system, the impact of social media in general and TikTok in particular, and the lurking danger of social contagion, then this story is for you.

From The Kia Boy Crime Wave by Nick Russo.  The subheading is Kids are stealing cars in historic numbers, bragging about it online, and taunting their victims. the police are basically helpless.

You’d be hard-pressed to design a car simpler to steal than a manual ignition Kia, manufactured between 2011 to 2021, or Hyundai, manufactured between 2015-2021. Smash the rear window, pry off the steering column, stick a USB cable into the ignition slot, turn, and floor it. The rear windows aren’t hooked up to the alarm system, and the ignition system lacks an engine immobilizer, a fairly standard security feature. Hotwiring these cars is, quite literally, child’s play.

The process is so simple, in fact, it can be done in under a minute, filmed with a smartphone, communicated to the world in the form of a TikTok tutorial, and followed up with clout-chasing POVs of the post-hotwire joyride. This is precisely what’s been happening across the United States — first in Milwaukee, and then, as if all at once, everywhere. 

Chances are, if you live in even a minor American city, at least a few kids nearby have started calling themselves “Kia Boys,” stealing cars for after school joyrides, and boasting about their exploits on social media. They tend to be in their mid-to-late teenage years, but some are as young as 10. They learned on TikTok how easy it was to hotwire certain Kias and Hyundais, knew intuitively how fun joyriding would be, and saw how much clout the original Milwaukee Kia Boys accrued. Then, crucially, they knew from firsthand experience or secondhand accounts that the odds of facing serious legal consequences for stealing cars were, at best, underwhelming.

Social media, corporate cost-cutting, and a weak criminal justice system have coalesced into the perfect twenty-first century cultural Molotov cocktail. The Milwaukee Kia Boys lit the fuse, and an explosion of car thefts swept the nation.

In case you think this is just another manufactured mainstream media panic - 

In 2020, 4,507 stolen cars were reported in Milwaukee, giving it the 66th highest rate of motor vehicle theft among American cities. In 2021, the city surged to eighth on the list, as stolen car reports more than doubled, reaching a staggering 10,477. Two-thirds of the cars stolen in 2021 were Kias or Hyundais, despite the two companies accounting for just 7% of all cars owned in America. And Milwaukee is only the tip of the iceberg.

In 2022, Los Angeles saw an 85% spike in thefts of Kia and Hyundai vehicles. In St. Petersburg, Florida, more than a third of all car thefts last summer were linked explicitly to inspiration from TikTok videos. In Chicago, some jurisdictions saw month-to-month spikes in Kia and Hyundai thefts of over 800%. In November 2022, Atlanta Police reported that 40% of all car thefts in the city that year were of Kias and Hyundais. Kia Boys have popped up in Buffalo, Dallas, several cities in Ohio, St. Louis, Seattle, Memphis, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, San Antonio, the DMV area (DC-Maryland-Virginia), and Kent County, Michigan. The volume of local news reports on Kia and Hyundai thefts is seemingly infinite. 

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The death count from stolen vehicle crashes is rising. Four teens in Buffalo, one in Columbus, one in Alton, Illinois, a 71-year-old man in Robbins, Illinois. Several teenagers have been shot and killed while driving, or by drivers of, stolen Kias and Hyundais. A St. Louis woman tracked down her stolen Hyundai and killed two people in a shootout.  

And the second order effects of what is essentially a social media craze (a la the Ice Bucket Challenge, or the The Tide Pod Challenge) are very real and very large.  

Police departments and car manufacturers have started distributing steering wheel clubs to deter thefts. Families whose cars have been stolen multiple times have had their insurance dropped. Progressive and State Farm have stopped insuring affected Kia and Hyundai models altogether. By last September, the list of Kia Boy victims had grown so long that a national class action lawsuit was filed against Kia and Hyundai, alleging liability for the cars’ lack of engine immobilizers. TikTok has slapped safety warnings on most Kia Boy videos. A Maryland Congressman recently asked TikTok to take down all remaining hotwiring tutorials. Criminal defense firms are recruiting clients with familiar language: “if you or a loved one has been arrested in connection with the car theft TikTok trend, call us today for a free consultation…”