From Target cashier to Internet sensation

Sometimes the trending topics on Twitter make sense: Sports teams during big games, politicians during elections, spooky things on Halloween.

And then there are the wacky Internet moments like #AlexFromTarget.

Who is #AlexFromTarget, you ask? A teenage Target cashier from Texas whose image-turned-meme was all over Twitter, Tumblr and Instagram this week. The hashtag blew up nationally on Sunday, then continued trending through the day Monday.

The origins of Alex's Internet fame are a bit murky, an ever-twisting tale of fangirls and maybe some Internet marketing. Or maybe not. Consider it further proof that believing almost anything on the Internet is a gamble.

Back to the beginning: A Yahoo article points to a Nov. 2 photo by Twitter user @auscalum that garnered thousands of likes and retweets. Tech blog Mashable noted that in later tweets @auscalum denied taking the photo. CNN said Twitter user @brooklynjreiff posted the picture Oct. 24.

But why did this picture of Alex go viral? It seems to come down to admiring teenage girls with social media at their fingertips. A collective digital fangirl scream — possibly furthered by an upstart (mostly unknown) company called Breakr that claims it "connects fans to their fandom."

The CEO of Breakr, Dil-Domine Jacobe Leonares, wrote in a LinkedIn post Tuesday that "After spreading the word amongst our fangirl followers to trend #AlexFromTarget, we started adding fuel to the fire by tweeting about it to our bigger YouTube influencers."

Yet by Wednesday morning, that seemed sketchy. Target said it had nothing to do with Breakr. Some of the "influencers" Breakr name-dropped were distancing themselves from the company. Gallons of digital ink were spilled in blog posts calling the post about the marketing stunt a stunt itself. Follow?

Regardless, more than a million #AlexFromTarget tweets zinged across the Internet and Alex Lee (aka @acl163) went from 144 Twitter followers to more than 500,000. Amid the social media storm, he tweeted, "Am i famous now?" and, "So many followers."

By the end of the day Monday, he even had a shout out from Ellen DeGeneres' account: "Hey, #AlexFromTarget, it's #EllenFromEllen."

Then he flew to Los Angeles to appear on DeGeneres' talk show, telling her that he had no idea about the picture until a manager at Target showed it to him. (He also tweeted that neither he nor his family had ever heard of Breakr.)

"About an hour later these random girls I'd never met before came in and showed me my Twitter page, and it had like 5,000 more followers and I was just really confused," said Alex, 16, admitting to DeGeneres that it's all overwhelming.

What did Minneapolis-based Target think of its Internet-famous employee?

The company on Monday issued this statement: "Usually our new weekly ad is what gets people tweeting on Sundays. So imagine our surprise yesterday when one of our Target team members managed to flood the Internet with images of red and khaki without even trying. We are proud to have a great team, including #AlexFromTarget, and are in contact with his store and family. We will keep you posted if he is available for comment, but for now, we would ask you to respect his privacy."

Then the company joined the wave of Internet love with a tweet from its official account: "We heart Alex, too! #alexfromtarget"

Seems like a nice kid. As for the rest of the Internet, figuring out its motivations is headache-inducing.

Katie Humphrey • 612-673-4758