Will Bottoms Survive the Apocalypse? @Heartthrobert Has Answers

This is SEARCH HISTORY, your deep dive into the online habits of our favorite creatures of the internet. From preferred stalking platforms and private browsing habits, to the social accounts we should all know about, we slide into the DMs and ask all your burning questions.

Science has the answers to all things gay—just ask the TikTok comedian Rob Anderson. Decked out in a purple bowtie and lab coat, Anderson—known as @Heartthrobert to his 2 million followers—breaks down our most pressing questions, like “why do gay men run like that?” and, “will bottoms survive the apocalypse?” To learn more about TikTok’s favorite gay scientist, we slid into the @Heartthrobert DMs.

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INTERVIEW: A/S/L?

ROB ANDERSON: 34/M/Los Angeles (I haven’t been asked that in forever).

INTERVIEW: What’s your Starbucks order?

ANDERSON: Venti iced coffee black easy ice, which makes me sound like I have a problem when I actually type that out.

INTERVIEW: What’s the first thing you do when you wake up?

ANDERSON: I kiss my dog and let him out. 

INTERVIEW: What’s your dog’s name?

ANDERSON: The Governor.

INTERVIEW: What was your favorite subject in school?

ANDERSON: I loved ceramics in high school (can you tell I’m 💅). 

INTERVIEW: Favorite meme format?

ANDERSON: I love really trashy, deep-fried memes. One where the words have all slowly been replaced with different words in different fonts and the original text isn’t even visible anymore. They feel like a crunchy sorority passed down. I love them. 

INTERVIEW: What’s your favorite YouTube rabbit hole?

ANDERSON: I love really specific pop culture conspiracy theories. Ones where the creators know it isn’t actually true, but try to make as many connections as they can. The “Lea Michelle can’t read” one is a favorite. The Jon Benet Ramsey actually being Katy Perry was a good one too.

INTERVIEW: What’s your stalking platform of choice?

ANDERSON: Instagram stories for regular moments, but when you connect a familiar body on Grindr it’s always a treasure to read those profiles. Like, “Oh I know those nipples… oh that’s his self-identified ‘tribe’…” It’s like you’re looking where you shouldn’t. Also when someone owns a house I sometimes do the Zillow stalk out of curiosity. 

INTERVIEW: So IG and Grinder. Good combo. Describe your private browsing persona in 3 words.

ANDERSON: Avoiding the paywall.

INTERVIEW: Print or digital?

ANDERSON: Digital.

INTERVIEW: How many unread text messages do you have?

ANDERSON: 335 unread texts, It used to be over 400 but I’ve gotten them down.

INTERVIEW: What was your AIM screen name?

ANDERSON:  My first was Hunky3, I thought hunky meant hot and chunky. I was 10.

INTERVIEW: What does your TikTok For You page look like?

ANDERSON: It’s gays and lesbians and then very niche musical theater stuff. Like somehow TikTok sends me every single Elphaba that ever sang “The Wizard and I”. But only specifically that song.

INTERVIEW: Choose one: money or clout.

ANDERSON: CLOUT always clout. Money follows.

INTERVIEW: What’s a GAY website everyone should know about?

ANDERSON: Since you capitalized GAY, I would say Sniffies.com—it’s NSFW just so people know—but it’s a cruising website. You just put a pic of your dick or your butt. It’s pretty straightforward. But not straight. 

INTERVIEW: An account everyone should follow?

ANDERSON: There’s a TikTok account @janewickline and I swear she’s the funniest. She has these sketches that sometimes go well over a minute that she delivers in this deadpan style. She’s a never-skip TikTok account. 

INTERVIEW: What is THE song of Pride 2022?

ANDERSON: “SloMo” is the gay pride song of the summer, the one with the dance break in it. Chanel was incredible in this year’s Eurovision! It’s like “Fuego” all over again.

INTERVIEW: Where do you spend the most time online?

ANDERSON: TikTok and Reddit. 

INTERVIEW: Describe your most incriminating accidental email/text.

ANDERSON:  When I was in sixth grade it was common for everyone to “trade” nudes on AOL chat rooms, basically swapping pics of other people to get other pics, knowing that none of us were actually the people in the photos. These exchanges would start in chat rooms and then move to 1:1 messages. One day in class a girl, Leanne, asked EVERYONE why I was in a Men4Men chat room (you could publicly see what chats people were in if you hovered over their screen name, which I didn’t realize). I was so quick about it and said I needed to get male nudes so I could use them to trade for female nudes later, which made sense to everyone else. Really the only time I’ve been caught in an incriminating situation like that. 

INTERVIEW: If you could spend the day with one IG influencer, who would it be?

ANDERSON: There was a fun IG influencer that just up and left a few years ago out of the blue… she would make really dumb food collabs with her body. Like she would make her toes look like french fries or make “loafer” shoes out of challah bread. I can’t remember her name (Caroline?) but she seemed pretty cool. I’d also want to ask her why she just ghosted out of nowhere!

INTERVIEW: Strangest DM you’ve received?

ANDERSON: I get really strange DMs. I actually have a song about them in my comedy show, where the lyrics are strictly from my DMs.  People ask me what my farts smell like, or if they can eat cereal out of my chest cavity (I have light Pectus Exavatum). 

INTERVIEW: Best place to take a thotty selfie?

ANDERSON: My old childhood home’s bathroom has perfect lighting for thotty pics, it’s really quite unfortunate. I’ll take my best-naked selfies there but then I have all of my mom’s weird beach decor behind me…

INTERVIEW: Read receipts: on or off?

ANDERSON: Read receipts OFF. Always OFF.

INTERVIEW: What’s your password?

ANDERSON: Are you asking for my password so you can delete your own filthy DMs before I put them in my show? Nice try.