Target Didn’t Start It But Joins Up With #AlexFromTarget Obsession

Social media’s ability to mint celebrities out of thin ether is on full display today, as a previously unknown young Target employee has become a worldwide Twitter trend. Fueled by teen Twitter’s love of cute boys and spurred by the Internet’s love of the absurd, #AlexFromTarget was trending all day and has been mentioned more than 1 million times on Twitter since Sunday, according to Topsy.

It’s viral gold for a brand and Target didn’t waste time cashing in on the opportunity:

We heart Alex, too! #alexfromtarget pic.twitter.com/LvA7qc5RfS

— Target (@Target) November 3, 2014

By all appearances, the #AlexFromTarget phenomenon seems to have blown up organically and innocently. On Oct. 26, a Twitter user posted an apparently surreptitiously taken photo of the Target bagger, then on Sunday another Twitter user — with 14,000 Twitter followers, but who has since protected her account — reposted the photo and it started taking off. Internet sleuths soon found a Twitter account that allegedly belongs to the real Alex. That account — @acl163 — now has more than 400,000 followers. The Washington Post has a good explainer about the fangirl environment than seems to have spawned AlexFromTarget’s fleeting bit of fame.