An attractive 16-year-old Target employee from Texas instantly became Internet famous around the world after a customer took a picture of him bagging groceries and tweeted it.
No one is sure exactly how Alex Christopher LaBeouf (better known as #AlexFromTarget) went from 144 followers to over 500,000 in just days - for not doing much of anything besides bagging groceries - but curious teens and reporters are trying to get the bottom of the #AlexFromTarget mystery.
Yesterday CNET, who was convinced #AlexFromTarget was part of a sneaky corporate marketing campaign, reported that the viral picture stemmed from a new company called Breakr, who claims to connect "fans with their fandom."
Breaker CEO Dil-Domine Jacobe Leonares told CNET they released the picture to study the power of the fan girl.
"Truly, we never thought it'd go this far, but it proved that with a strong fan base and rally the fan girls, you can," Leonares tells CNET.
The picture was first posted by Twitter user @Auscalum who was never employed by Breakr. The Twitter user and Alex both said they never heard of the company before.
Leonares told BuzzFeed News that they decided to send @Auscalum's picture and the #AlexFromTarget hash tag to their unnamed "influencial Twitter followers" because they felt the teen was attractive enough to go viral amongst fan girls.
Leonares claims that their network of followers is what made the teen instantly Twitter famous.
