Robby Roadsteamer’s – Performance artist Rob Potylo, better known as his alter ego Robby Roadsteamer, has turned pranks on Trump supporters and appearances at protests into internet stardom—while also accumulating arrests, threats, and legal battles.
SOMERVILLE — Rob Potylo had been locked away in a basement recording studio for most of a week, working through vocal tracks while the April sun finally pushed through outside.
His alter ego. Robby Roadsteamer. usually belongs elsewhere—at Trump rallies. at anti-ICE protests where he delivers parodic lyrics. and at demonstrations across the country where his chaotic persona draws both attention and trouble.. In the studio, Potylo wasn’t trying to top a new viral clip.. He was trying to bottle the moment into something longer: an album. maybe even a limited release vinyl. using photos from his arrests as cover art.
“It’s like AC/DC always said: ‘It’s a long way to the top if you wanna rock ‘n’ roll,’” Potylo said, leaning into the rock-and-roll mythology of his unlikely path.
Potylo, who is 49, plays Roadsteamer as a punked-up mix of pro-wrestling swagger and Masshole rage.. Over time. the prank-and-post formula—crash events. provoke reactions. then upload the result—has helped him amass hundreds of thousands of followers online.. In recent months, the internet attention has widened further, with videos that often bring in more than a million views.
“We have to remember that Donald Trump is in the WWE Hall of Fame,” Potylo said over lunch recently. “We do not fight absurdity with valor. We fight it with more absurdity.”
Roadsteamer’s rise has come with a paper trail of confrontations.. Potylo has crashed Trump rallies and Proud Boy gatherings, trolled Marjorie Taylor Greene, and chased down Rudy Giuliani.. More recently, he became a fixture at anti-ICE protests across the country, including delivering lyrics such as: “Hey Mr.. Tangerine Man, get rid of brown people for me.”
Online. Roadsteamer’s feed leans into the surreal: he has worn a giraffe costume while humping the pavement in videos. offered sea monkey starter kits to pro-life activists by promising they can “grow a useless clump of cells” on their own. twerked in a Tesla showroom. and crashed a MAGA boat rally.. At one Saugus overpass, he was chased off by a mustachioed Trump supporter who described his biceps as “26-inch pythons.”
“Let’s storm Applebees!” he likes to yell at glowering Trump backers. “No political violence!”
Some of the attention has landed outside the usual social media ecosystem. The article notes that Potylo has been interviewed by Rolling Stone, invited to work with activist groups, and featured by CNN in a special on art and activism.
Still, even as the character became bigger, Potylo’s own body and legal situation have tightened around him. “He’s not sure how long he can sustain the gig,” the reporting says, pointing to the physical and legal risks he has faced.
Potylo says he has been manhandled by authorities. threatened by Trump supporters. and detained three times at anti-ICE protests over the past six months.. The most detailed incident came in January. when officers with the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office arrested him in Minneapolis while he sung a satiric version of The Who’s “Baba O’Riley” during an anti-ICE protest; he was held for 27 hours.. The article also describes detentions in Portland last October and again in Minneapolis.
Russell Ellis. an activist known online as Jolly Good Ginger. framed the appeal of the contrast Potylo brings to the streets.. “There’s this powerful juxtaposition of armed. masked [ICE agents]. who are wearing full tactical gear and AR-15s. and then a guy in a giraffe costume opposite of them with thong underwear. ” Ellis said.
The same contrast that helps attract viewers has exacted a toll. Potylo said the detentions left him laid out for more than a week and affected his ability to function. “I couldn’t function. I couldn’t think straight,” he said.
His health is part of the strain as well.. Potylo has advanced-stage polycystic kidney disease, which he described as a genetic condition that causes his kidneys to swell.. “It’s like carrying twins. ” he said. adding that he once drained a Shirley Temple and two orange sodas to “force function.” He said the condition may one day require a kidney transplant and can cause debilitating cramps. and that he often must rest for several days after a performance.
“My body doesn’t hurt when I’m out there,” he said.
During a conversation about what keeps him going, Potylo compared the emotional lift of getting a video out to a ritual. “The high of nailing one of these videos, it’s tantric,” he said. “I’m just like, ‘Man, I’m untouchable.’”
The path to that “untouchable” feeling was not a straight line.. For more than a quarter century, Potylo has chased an audience while living hand to mouth.. He had a local run as a comedian. a radio personality. and the frontman for a satiric metal band. The Sweatpant Boners.. He produced a low-budget web series, a slew of albums, and landed slots on a few nationally televised talent shows.. But much of his work was described as living in the margins. with Roadsteamer sometimes considered hard to book or harder to tolerate.
Rick Jenkins. founder of the Comedy Studio in Harvard Square. described Roadsteamer as having an outsized voice when he began booking Potylo in the 2000s.. Jenkins said the political focus was the evolution.. “That’s the major evolution,” Jenkins said.. “He’s always had the voice, but now he has something to say.”
Crean. who used to run open mic nights at the Middle East. recalled that Roadsteamer was “like nothing that I’d ever seen — anarchic and chaotic. really fun. and a little bit scary.” But he also said Potylo could take it too far. describing a time when Roadsteamer compared a heavyset woman in the audience to a young Chris Farley.
“That’s ‘too hurtful for someone that’s paid to see your show,’” Crean said. He added that he has a lot of love for Potylo but doesn’t want him at his open mic.
Potylo himself said he once tried stepping out from behind the Roadsteamer persona. After he took LSD for the first time in 2006, he said it felt like a revelation. “I’m like: You can still be you. You don’t have to just hide behind this character,” he said.
He attempted an acoustic, serious route—appearing as himself and performing songs from the heart—but Potylo said the switch backfired. “I used to be able to sell out the Middle East downstairs,” he said. “I couldn’t bring 20 people when I started doing my acoustic, serious songs.”
As he tried to make a go of it, he lost the BCN gig. He then started “Quiet Desperation,” a self-produced mockumentary web series about trying and failing to succeed as an artist in Boston, enlisting hundreds of Boston-area performers in 2009.
One of the show’s performers was Vermin Supreme. a perennial activist and presidential candidate best known for campaigning with a boot on his head and promising a free pony for every American.. Supreme, who lives on the North Shore, invited Potylo to join him at the 2012 Democratic National Convention in North Carolina.. The reporting says it was Potylo’s first real taste of political performance art. and that over the next decade he appeared as Supreme’s sidekick on a series of tours and political events.
Potylo’s ambitions also included work beyond the stage.. He moved to Los Angeles in 2015 to work on a documentary about Joanie Laurer. the professional wrestler known as Chyna. and he tried to act. picking up work as a film extra and appearing on an episode of “The Gong Show.” Laurer died in 2016. and Potylo ended up living in an unfurnished room in Pasadena while trying to help finish the film. which was released in 2021.
In 2023, he returned to Boston, where he said some in the comedy scene greeted him coldly.. Crean said he’d been banned from a bunch of open mics and that Potylo had done aggressive stuff toward young ladies from the stage that crossed the line.. Potylo said he wouldn’t make some of those jokes “in such a brutal fashion. ” but he also said Roadsteamer is. ultimately. an act.
“Should we put ‘the actor that played Archie Bunker up on a cross because he played a misogynistic Masshole?’” Potylo asked.
The big breakthrough. the reporting says. came that fall when he accompanied Supreme to New Hampshire the day Trump filed to be on the state’s presidential primary ballot.. Unlike earlier political outings, Potylo went as Robby Roadsteamer rather than Supreme’s sidekick.. Potylo recalled the day as a turning point.
“It was game over,” he said. “I got three videos that day with over a million views, and I’m like, ‘What the [expletive] am I doing?’” He decided to take his act solo, heading to a series pro-Trump demonstrations.
At first. Potylo kept it local to Greater Boston. trolling MAGA rallies on suburban bridges and in strip mall parking lots while dressed in a furry vest and a floppy headdress. like a bootleg QAnon Shaman.. In one early Wakefield video, Potylo was twerking in cheetah-print leggings and a thong.. A woman holding a Trump flag asked, “Why are you doing that,” adding that he looked like a fool.
Potylo responded, “What are you doing?” then shot back, “You got a flag. You’re screaming for a felon. We’re all doing ridiculous [expletive] today.”
Then, in the late summer of 2024, the reporting highlights two stunts that helped widen Roadsteamer’s reach.. He crashed two local appearances by wrestling legend and Trump supporter Hulk Hogan. asking. “What are they gonna do when we drop the big boot on trans?” from Hogan’s confusion.. He also crashed a press conference Steve Bannon gave following his release from prison on contempt of Congress charges. asking from the audience. “When’s the next insurrection?” and. “And can we storm the Burger King after this?”
The stunt earned him an awkward smile from Bannon, a security escort out of the room, and some 10 million views across platforms. Potylo said the attention “blows me up beyond just the hive world.” He said he was starting to make real money from his social media accounts.
By spring 2025, he decided to treat it like something bigger.. “Let’s treat this like it’s rock ‘n roll. ” he said. adding that he bought a ticket to Los Angeles in June and began hitting places around the country.. He has since traveled to protests in Washington. D.C.. Los Angeles. Portland. and Minneapolis. while his social media presence has grown to about 1.1 million followers across platforms.
Perhaps the most tangible payoff, the reporting notes, is that after years of couch surfing or living in sparse quarters with roommates, he could afford a place of his own—a one-bedroom apartment in Belmont. He said he saved money on furniture.
“I decked it out with the best from Bob’s,” he said. “I’m living the dream.”
A week of studio work, and the prospect of turning arrest photos into cover art, now sit alongside a worry about time and health. “I’m not 24,” he said. “I’m gonna have a heart attack out there.”
The pattern of Potylo’s recent momentum is built on the same sequence repeated in different settings: Roadsteamer crashes or provokes in the public arena. the videos spread widely online. and the same visibility is followed by detentions and legal risk—like the 10 million-view stunts in 2024 and the three detentions at anti-ICE protests over the past six months.
And yet Potylo doesn’t sound ready to step back.. “It feels like you’re breaking through to this new part of the art form,” he said.. “It’s like lighting the guitar on fire.” He added that even after grueling detentions. the rush of protests—and the “dopamine hit” of a good video—may be too hard to give up.
He plans to sue over all three detentions and said he has amassed a legal fund of nearly $200,000 through multiple GoFundMe drives. At the same time, he’s weighing whether the pace can keep going as his health demands more of him.
For now, Potylo is still in the basement, trying to translate the most dangerous parts of the character into something you can hold—a record meant to outlast the moment the clip ends.
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