Meet the 21-year-old Roblox creator whose roach-ridden, trash-filled room has both fascinated and horrified fans

• The Roblox streamer and TikToker PowEnvy has gone viral with videos of his trash-strewn bedroom.
• His clips toe the line between serious and satire, with many viewers unsure what is real.

PowEnvy's room is a junk food safari. In one corner, there are empty snack packets of Takis, Funyuns, and Airheads. In another, McDonald's and Popeyes bags are piled against each other. Empty cans of Dr. Pepper lay next to used Starbucks and soda cups on his desk.

In a video from late September, he showed himself cleaning up his bedroom because a date was coming over. He made an effort to tidy up — throwing out rotting food and an old Starbucks drink — but the room still looked arguably dirty by the end.

"Overall, I think it's looking really good," he said.

PowEnvy confirmed that the mess is real — not staged

The Houston, Texas-based TikToker, whose legal first name is Jacob (he didn't want to disclose his last name due to privacy concerns), has gone viral several times with his deadpan bedroom tours that toe the line between serious and satire.

PowEnvy told Business Insider that nothing is staged. In fact, the trash he leaves in his room brings in so many roaches (he sees about two to three a day) that he's made content counting them and attempts to kill them.

The creator has been streaming on Roblox since 2013, but he's only amassed a little over 17,000 followers on Twitch. He started making TikToks in mid-2022 and gained over 200,000 followers after uploading his bedroom tours. He often frames his videos as a "Day in the Life of a Roblox Streamer."

"It's like finding Pokémon; you'll be wandering the room and they pop out at you," he said about spotting cockroaches.

His videos feed into popular and concerning tropes about video game creators having poor hygiene and living in messy conditions. He's also shared TikToks of himself "learning how to cook" (he boiled cup noodles), hiring maids to clean his room, and advocating for showering only once a week.

His videos have culled such a cult following that viewers have repeatedly accused him of faking the content, with some even alleging he reuses some of the trash he shows himself taking out.

Mostly, his fans are horrified.

"Bros room is a biohazard," one top comment reads on an October 18 video.

Some have tried to offer advice. "I get cleaning can be a drag but it's necessary my guy, turn off the PC, put on your favorite music and start with one section at a time, you can do it!" one fan wrote on a video where he said his life was falling apart because he was on a losing streak in the game "League of Legends."

PowEnvy maintained that he lives this way authentically; "The roaches are not paid actors," he joked to BI.

"It's not like I'm spending a whole day eating food to throw on the floor," he added. "I'll just forget. I'll finish eating and I won't want to go downstairs; I'll want to stay on the computer."

The only time he's felt forced to clean his room, he said, was after his two pet rats' cages had amassed so much scat his friend noticed and commented on the odor.

PowEnvy said much of the waste in his room is from junk food. According to the streamer, a typical day involves eating a Starbucks bacon sandwich for breakfast, Takis for a post-breakfast snack, and Chick-fil-A for lunch. He'll consume several other snacks throughout the day, like GoGo squeezes, and have a pizza for dinner.

He said he spends most of his day gaming unless he's filming a TikTok. He said he has an exciting brand deal in the works for his TikTok channel, but he didn't want to disclose details.

Until PowEnvy recently moved into his own house, he lived with his parents, who were fine with him sharing his living habits for the world to see.

"They're supportive of my videos, but they're not supportive of my room," he said.

He said he hadn't felt much much of a burden to clean his room, despite the pressure from his parents and the onslaught of internet critics. If anything, he said, he feels galvanized to expand his content beyond stuff involving his bedroom's frightening filth.

"I don't care what I'm known for, but I just want to make entertaining content," PowEnvy said. "I just want to make people laugh."