I am not the only one. When I asked on Twitter whether others had seen him, dozens said yes. One woman replied, “I live in BOSTON and have still seen this man on visits to [New York City].” And apparently, Alex is not an isolated case. Similar mythological figures have popped up in local dating-app ecosystems nationwide, respawning each time they’re swiped away.

On Reddit, men often complain about the bot accounts on Tinder that feature super-beautiful women and turn out to be “follower scams” or ads for adult webcam services. But men like Alex are not bots. These are real people, gaming the system, becoming—whether they know it or not—key figures in the mythology of their cities’ digital culture. Like the internet, they are confounding and scary and a little bit romantic. Like mayors and famous bodega cats, they are both hyper-local and larger than life.

In January, Alex’s Tinder fame moved off-platform, thanks to the New York–based comedian Lane Moore.

Moore hosts a monthly interactive stage show called Tinder Live, during which an audience helps her find dates by voting on who she swipes right on. During last month’s show, Alex’s profile came up, and at least a dozen people said they’d seen him before. They all recognized the countertops and, of course, the pose. Moore told me the show is funny because using dating apps is “lonely and confusing,” but using them together is a bonding experience. Alex, in a way, proved the concept. (Moore matched with him, but when she tried to ask him about his kitchen, he gave only terse responses, so the show had to move on.)

When I finally spoke with Alex Hammerli, 27, it was not on Tinder. It was through Facebook Messenger, after a member of a Facebook group run by The Ringer sent me a screenshot of Hammerli bragging that his Tinder profile was going to end up on a billboard in Times Square.

Read: The five years that changed dating

In 2014, Hammerli told me, he saw a man on Tumblr posing in a penthouse that overlooked Central Park—over and over, the same pose, changing only his clothes. He liked the idea, and started taking photos and posting them on Instagram, as a way to preserve his “amazing wardrobe” for posterity. He posted them on Tinder for the first time in early 2017, mostly because those were the photos he had of himself. They have worked for him, he said. “A lot of girls are like, ‘I swiped for the kitchen.’ Some are like, ‘When can I come over and be put on that counter?’”

Hammerli shows up in Tinder swipers’ feeds as often as he does because he deletes the app and reinstalls it every two weeks or so (except during the holidays, because tourists are “awful to hook up with”). Though his Tinder bio says that he lives in New York, his apartment is actually in Jersey City—which explains the kitchen—and his neighbor is the photographer behind every shot.