If you’ve ridden the New York City subway in the last two months, you know Lucas. You might hate him, but you know him. He’s the mustachioed man who stares at you from subway ads, never quite smiling, under a declaration of stuff he does: Lucas buys a round, Lucas takes the stairs, Lucas uses Venmo.

Lucas’s favorite money exchange app, Venmo, is what he and his blank expression are attempting to advertise. But with vague messaging and those empty eyes, the campaign, which a Metropolitan Transportation Authority spokesperson told Fast Company likely cost somewhere between $200,000 to $350,000, has drawn extreme reactions from subway riders, many of whom despise the Lucas ads. Who is Lucas? What is Venmo? Why is his half-stache so creepy? The ads have created more confusion than awareness, as billboard advertising expert (and self-professed Venmo fan) John Laramie explained to Valleywag. “I should give a fuck that Lucas likes magic? Oh wait, I like magic, so maybe I’ll like Lucas, which means then I should try Venmo?”

Fast Company recently spoke with Lucas himself (sort of) to get to the bottom of the ads. Venmo’s PR people wouldn’t let us have direct access to the local celeb, probably because of the negative energy surrounding his face. But, we were allowed to submit a few vetted questions to Lucas via email. Through his presumably highly edited answers, we learn about how Lucas won the honor of having his face plastered all over the city’s well-trafficked underground tunnels, what’s up with his facial-hair situation, and how it feels to be notorious.

FAST COMPANY: First things first, who are you? What’s your role at Venmo? How long have you worked there?

LUCAS CHI: I’m a software engineer at Venmo, and I work on the Devops team. I’ve been here for about four months now.

Okay, on to the ad: How did you get to be the face of the Venmo campaign?

Mostly luck; I was just in the right place at the right time. Iqram, one of our cofounders, spotted me making coffee for myself in the morning after an uninspiring meeting with an ad agency and had one of those moments of clarity. Apparently “Lucas uses Venmo” has a good cadence.