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A TikToker toured Philly’s messiest ‘boy rooms.’ Here’s what she saw.

Rachel Coster recently brought TikTok's “Boy Room Show” to Philly.

NYC-based comic Rachel Coster’s “Boy Room Show” investigates messy "boy" rooms and recently toured apartments in Philly.
NYC-based comic Rachel Coster’s “Boy Room Show” investigates messy "boy" rooms and recently toured apartments in Philly.Read moreDamion Bucenec/Boy Room

Kyle Hinkle no longer has a walk-in closet, thanks to his 6-year-old rabbit, Pebbles, who calls it home. Instead, he has a dozen or so laundry baskets scattered across his Fairmount apartment.

“I have a bunny, his room is clean. He has standards, I don’t,” Hinkle says during comic Rachel Coster’s “Boy Room Show.” The TikTok series recently toured rooms in Philly that would make moms “really mad.”

“My idea was, ‘If I do [the show], I’ll clean,’” said Hinkle, 28, who works in clinical research. “It was kind of like an experiment and a little bit of self-shaming.”

In “Boy Room Show,” Coster interviews men in their 20s and 30s whose rooms might feature a lamp dangling from a wire in the shower, a missing bedroom door, or a dead crab in a jar.

“This show has made me realize I can’t let myself be sad over a man ever again because this is how they live,” one commenter said under a video.

“Boy Room Show” has 154,600 TikTok followers, and some videos have garnered half a million views since Coster debuted the show in March. The show is like celebrity Architectural Digest home tours or MTV Cribs where viewers get a sneak peak into people’s private lives. But after watching a “Boy Room” episode, you’re more likely to rethink skipping a much-needed deep clean.

At the end of each video, New York-based Coster gives the titular boys advice on how they can make their room livable. The idea came about after she went over to a friend’s house and saw his messy room that turned girls off. He declined her offer to help clean it.

@boyroomshow Tom, 35, South Philly, PA Welcome to Boy Room, the show where we investigate boys rooms. We traveld out to Philadelphia to see Tom’s extremely unfinished hazard of a room. Would you live without a door? a show by @Gymnasium #apartmenttour #philadelphia #boyroom #hoarders #messy #gymnasium ♬ original sound - boyroomshow

“Then I was like, ‘OK, if I can’t help him, I’ll try and help the world,” Coster said.

Coster, 28, went on the hunt for more boy rooms across the country. She and the team at Gymnasium thought of cities that could potentially have the grossest rooms.

“It was obviously going to be Philly,” Coster said.

Shameless “Boy Room” participants can be nominated through DM or email. The show receives more than 100 DMs a day from the men themselves or from desperate moms who want their sons to clean their rooms, according to producer Adam Faze.

Hinkle follows “Boy Room Show” on TikTok and Instagram and saw Coster’s social media callout for Philly boy rooms. His two friends, who are among the few who have actually seen his room, suggested that he should DM the show.

After the video went live, Hinkle planned to clean his room that week.

He hasn’t gotten around to it yet.

@boyroomshow Kyle, 28, Philadelphia, PA Welcome to Boy Room, the show where we invesitage boys rooms. Today we visit the 28 year old with a Laundry Phobia, and a bunny named Pebbles. a show by @Gymnasium #boyroom #apartmenttour #philadelphia #gymnasium #hoarders #messy ♬ original sound - boyroomshow

A few blocks away from Hinkle’s closet disaster in Fairmount is Danny Macdonald’s house, where each room has at least one taxidermy item.

That includes a black bear, a ram, a boar, a red fox, and a coyote, along with cowhide and sheepskin that serves as a rug or is draped on furniture. He says he has nearly 20 items of taxidermy in his home.

Macdonald, a 31-year-old designer, collects antiques and haunted objects and decorates his home as if it’s a “cluttered antique store.” “Boy Room Show” was his chance to show it off, he said.

As someone who loves animals, he said, it’s a way to make his space “feel more alive.”

Coster doesn’t get a preview of the rooms ahead of filming, so each tour is a surprise. After seeing Macdonald’s home, Coster said she was “spooked.”

“I was a little scared of the taxidermy in Danny’s room,” Coster said. “It kind of follows you as you walk around.”

@boyroomshow Danny, 31, Philadelphia, PA Welcome to Boy Room, the show where we investigate boys rooms. Today, @Rachel Coster visits Dannys haunted taxidermy mansion. A show by @Gymnasium #boyroom #apartmenttour #philadelphia #gymnasium #taxidermy #hoarders ♬ original sound - boyroomshow

The tour is less intimidating for the filthy boys than you’d expect, since only three people are in your room, Macdonald said.

But “after they left, I was like ‘Oh, I guess I technically just gave a room tour to a few thousand people,” Macdonald said.

While some viewers are glad they’re “not like that” when they see these rooms, others find comfort in knowing there are other people who are just as disgusting as they are.

Coster’s advice for Philly boy rooms? Take out the trash.

But for some like Hinkle, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.

“I take pride in my city when it’s clean, but I also have pride in my city when it’s a little bit grimy,” Hinkle said.