Yesterday, in a Tweet urging Washingtonians to obtain commercial drivers licenses, the DC Department of Motor Vehicles created a sensation: they provided a sample license featuring a man who, um, probably does quite well on Tinder.
Here’s what we know about the unusually handsome fictional driver:
- His name is Thomas Alexander Herculano de Carvalho Montalvao Machado
- He is a 38-year-old veteran and organ donor
- He can legally drive trucks, dump trucks, stretch limos, and buses, among other commercial vehicles
- At 6’4” and 200 pounds, he appears to be lean and mean
- He is a resident of Northeast (although Google street view suggests that his building is under construction—is he a squatter?)
- His surname appears to be Portuguese or Brazilian
- His 56-character name would occupy 1/5 of a Tweet
- His signature and name do not match
When I showed Mr. Machado to my teenaged son, I can best describe his reaction as a “guffaw.” Quite correctly, he described the pictured trucker as a “less buff version of a GigaChad” and added, “my man’s got some serious jaw.”
The internet’s reaction was similar, if perhaps less colorful:
Northeast D.C. resident Thomas Alexander Herculano De Carvalho Montalvao Machado has a great name, is a veteran and an organ donor, and oh my he’s a looker. High potential for a run for elected office. https://t.co/gjKqm4tXBt
— Martin Austermuhle (@maustermuhle) April 27, 2022
fascinated by the DC DMV's editorial choices to make the sample CDL guy have a wild last name, 6'4", and…hot? https://t.co/Ucgvnrat8N
— Tucker Cholvin (@tuckerhimself) April 27, 2022
NY's Michael M Motorist has no chance against DC's Herculano de Carvalho Montalvao Machado. https://t.co/BL5sqRiuT9 pic.twitter.com/sKudQCKFs9
— Chris Jones (@cjones47) April 28, 2022
As part of Washingtonian‘s investigation into the life of Thomas Alexander Herculano de Carvalho Montalvao Machado, we conducted a reverse image search, which revealed another enigmatic detail: he was previously photographed for Adobe Stock.
In addition to this straightforward portrait (which is suspiciously similar to his headshot for the DMV), Mr. Machado is pictured in a backwards baseball cap, in a fedora with a camera around his neck, and as a soft-focus background character doing some kind of laptop work. He appears to be charitable, he has ridden a skateboard at least once, and he is featured in an offbeat image entitled “Silly employees with arms crossed wearing boxes on their heads.”
Finally, two short videos on Adobe Stock confirm that, in addition to existing in two-dimensions, Mr. Machado also exists in time. In these videos, he is making what my editor calls “the face they have you make at a botox appointment.” The anger is disconcerting—it’s at odds with the happy-and-handsome-organ-donor brand.
Washingtonian has learned a final piquant detail: Mr. Machado appears to have a roommate who is also a licensed driver in the Capital Region. In a wild coincidence, the roommate, Thomas Alexander Samplecard, bears a twinlike resemblance to DC DMV director Gabriel Robinson.
DC DMV deleted their Tweet of Mr. Machado’s license this morning. While we assumed that this attempt to scrub Mr. Machado from the internet meant his CDL had been revoked (perhaps due to the mismatched signature?), a spokesperson explained that this was not the case: apparently they deleted the Tweet for “privacy reasons,” since “the image included a family name that is shared by one or more individuals.” The DMV did not grant our request to interview the public servant who created Mr. Machado. Perhaps this imaginative individual has already been poached by Netflix. Or by the marketing wing of Tinder—you could see them writing good Metro ads.
