Devious lick
The devious lick is a destructive social media trend in which middle- and high-school students posted videos of themselves stealing, vandalizing, or displaying items they stole from their school, typically from a bathroom. The trend went viral on TikTok in 2021 and resulted in the arrests of several students, as well as warnings issued by police departments. It was reported in schools in Canada, Australia, the United States, and Germany.
History
The trend originated on September 1, 2021, after the TikTok user jugg4elias posted a video showing a box of disposable masks they claimed to have stolen from school, with the caption "A month into school... devious lick". Similar videos with the term "devious lick" soon flooded the platform, with students stealing items from bathrooms, such as soap and paper towel dispensers, toilet paper roll shields, urinals, sinks, mirrors, and floor and ceiling tiles. Students also allegedly stole items outside of the bathrooms, including exit signs, telephones, interactive whiteboards, and microscopes. The videos were typically accompanied by a sped-up version of Lil B's "Ski Ski BasedGod". The videos' captions often modify the name of the trend with synonymous adjectives, referring to "mischievous" or "diabolical" licks.Various schools began taking action against the trend, warning students of serious consequences and arrests. In British Columbia, students ripped out 42 soap dispensers from school bathrooms within the span of one week. In Huron County, Ontario, a bathroom had all of its urinals and toilets clogged with paper towels, while other toilet paper was ripped out and thrown to the ground.
More serious vandalism attributed to the trend involved broken mirrors and light fixtures. In Polk County, Florida, three students were arrested from two high schools, as well as one 15-year-old who was arrested for damaging and stealing soap dispensers at Bartow High School. In Boone County, Kentucky, eight students were charged over the trend, with four receiving theft and four receiving vandalism charges. In Stafford County, Virginia, a student from Stafford [Senior High School] was charged for vandalizing a park bathroom near the school. In Mohave County, Arizona, a 15-year-old was arrested for stealing a school toilet paper dispenser.
A similar trend emerged in May 2025, which was dubbed the "Chromebook Challenge", this challenge involved mainly with vandalism of school-issued Chromebooks by inserting conductive materials such as pencil leads or paper clips into the USB ports, starting fires.
Reactions
Platform response
The original devious lick video was removed on September 13, and TikTok subsequently began removing videos featuring the trend. It was banned by TikTok on September 15 for violating its community guidelines against illegal activities, by which time the "devious" hashtag had over 235 million views. The hashtag and related search results were redirected to an error message about TikTok's Community Guidelines.Media response
In addition to schools and the police, various media commentators condemned the trend.Journalist Brock Colyar of Curbed demonstrated that three separate videos of supposed "devious licks" were, in fact, all staged, with one video of a student supposedly stealing a microscope actually being of a microscope the student owned at home, and critiqued the media and political response as a moral panic.